


Life Sentence

by Paint_Stained_Heart



Series: Thawing [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Criminal Justice, Detroit, Drug Abuse, Halfway House, Healing, M/M, Mass Incarceration, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Past mention of prostitution, Prison, Recovery, Relapse, STDs, STIs, Some Explicit Sexual Content, Unreliable Narrator, it's the sequel y'all, mild homophobia, opioid crisis, prison system, veteran, you're gonna want to read Thawing first
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-06-13 12:48:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 48,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15365046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paint_Stained_Heart/pseuds/Paint_Stained_Heart
Summary: No one tells you that withdrawals are only the beginning. Bucky thinks he's starting to understand why.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All of the notes from Thawing apply: I'm not an expert, I'm just doing my best to process the world around me. Please feel free to comment, correct, and educate me. I am writing from minimal experience. Take care of yourselves <3
> 
> Huge thanks to Rivertam for beta'ing this for so long.
> 
> (Oh, and idk if I'll be able to rearrange the order, but this story takes place BETWEEN Thawing and The Boxer. Sorry for the confusion!)

“Let me get this straight. You’re. . . a Quaker?” Bucky asks again, eyes narrowing in confusion as he looks at Steve from across the kitchen table. It’s a week into the new year – one week exactly – and it’s already dark outside even though Bucky’s new watch says it’s only 5:30 pm. His number of possessions had nearly doubled during the holidays. Steve got him the watch, which was his favorite. He felt good, having a watch. Like he was a part of the society that needed to know the time, had places to be and appointments to meet, a shift to clock in at every day. People who expected him to come home, not to be late for dinner.

Normal things. Y’know, non-heroin things.

The rest of the house had pooled together to get him a nice Craftsman toolbox. Some of the stuff they filled it with was from Goodwill, but in the Motor City, the Goodwills had pretty slick second-hand tools. Sam had even remembered to get a menorah for the house, just for him, and Clint and Bruce had feigned nonchalance as they ate up Bucky’s re-telling of the eight days of Hanukkah. Bucky Skyped with Becca and their father on Christmas Eve, all of them eating Chinese takeout even miles apart – an old Barnes family tradition. They hadn’t done that since his mom died.

At 5:30 pm on a Tuesday, most of the day-shifters are still on the clock, and all the night-shifters are catching their last precious minutes of shut-eye before getting ready for work. Bucky and Steve are miraculously alone for once, doing work quietly across from each other at the kitchen table. But upon Steve’s latest confession, the pen Bucky’d been journaling with dangles lifelessly from his hand, frozen in mid air. He has to remind himself to close his mouth, even as his lips turn up at the corners. He just – he  _ can’t. _

_ Steve Rogers is a Quaker. _

“For the twelfth time, I’m not a  _ Quaker _ . I work for a Quaker  _ organization _ ,” Steve huffs, stewing from the other side of the table. He sips at his coffee – a sign that he’s going to be up late working tonight.

“I think that makes you a Quaker,” Bucky points out with a shrug, failing to hide his amusement as his mouth turns up at one side. 

“For fuck’s sake,” Steve sighs, rolling his eyes and turning back to the laptop (a new household acquisition courtesy of a very generous and probably wine-drunk Natasha). Mostly, Bucky’s just impressed that he got an f-bomb out of actual saint  _ Steve Rogers _ . That there’s a rare occurrence.

“Okay, okay,” Bucky cedes, giving up the charade to spare Steve the frustration; he’s starting to worry that Steve’s blush will become permanent. “Really, Steve. I want to know what you do there. I feel like this is something I should know. Probably should’ve known a while ago, honestly. It’s your damn  _ job _ , for Christ’s sake.” He leans in and rests his chin on the back of his metal hand for storytime.

Steve seems to think on his words, debate how annoyed he is with the Quaker jokes, and finally give in, his blue eyes still skeptical. “It’s the American Friends Service Committee,” he says slowly, waiting to see if Bucky’s going to butt in with a joke. He doesn’t, grinning victoriously as Steve continues. “That’s the umbrella organization at least. It’s a nonprofit. We’re into, y’know, peace, justice, those kinds of things.”

“Gee, who do I know who cares about peace and justice?” Bucky teases, pretending to actually think about it and tapping his metal fingers against his chin. Christ, the literal embodiment of peace and justice was sitting on a wooden kitchen chair not two feet from him. It gets Steve blushing again, but he knows Bucky’s right. These days it seems like half their conversations devolve into Steve ranting about the latest injustice coming out of the White House or the way people are being treated in this country nowadays. Bucky doesn’t mind Steve’s speeches (rants) so much, except when he remembers that he’d once put on camo and boots to defend this bullshit. He carried those stars and stripes on his back. Sometimes if he thinks about it too hard, he has to do one of Sam’s count-to-ten things. Which he hates.

_ “Anyway,  _ the AFSC has branches all over the country, but the office here in Michigan that I run does criminal justice work.” When Bucky looks lost, Steve adds, “I write to prisoners, mostly, plus some more general advocacy stuff, too. Fight back on dumb policies that the MDOC puts in place just ‘cause they’re on a power trip. Really, it’s just a whole lot of meetings and emails and phone calls. And sometimes lawyers. Mostly in Lansing, that’s why I get the Jeep.”

“So, what, you’re like a pen pal for jailbirds?”

“Nah, Buck, it’s more strategic than that. And we don’t really say jailbirds, anymore. It’s usually better to say incarcerated persons. We send them information that might help ‘em out. How to prepare for parole, fill out grievance forms, know their rights. Things that no one on the inside will help them with. A lot of commutation questionnaires for 650-lifers...”

“Slow down, jerk, you’re losin’ me. Not all of us finished college,” Bucky interrupts, sticking his tongue out. He doesn’t mean for it to sting, but Steve turns pink and a little crestfallen, and Bucky wishes he could take it back. 

“Sorry, Buck, I get carried away.” Steve heaves a sigh. “A commutation is when the governor says that someone’s done their time and lets ‘em out of prison early.” He isn’t meeting Bucky’s eyes.

Not ready to leave it on a sour note, Bucky reaches across the table, first stretching out his metal prosthetic before remembering how cold the titanium gets, retracting it, and offering his human hand instead. He touches Steve’s chin lightly, and his fingers pause on the five o’clock shadow, scratch there gently. “Hey.”

Steve takes his eyes off the keyboard and blinks at him for a minute, sighs, and then softens.

“I like it when you explain things to me, okay?” Bucky whispers, offering a half-smile as a peace offering. Steve nods into his palm. 

“I just wish…” Steve tries, clearly frustrated and working himself up. 

_ Save the noble speech, pal.  _ “I know. Me, too. Now go on, buddy. A commutation is like a pardon… ”

Steve collects himself. “A commutation is like a pardon, yes. Except unlike a pardon, it doesn’t mean you’re forgiven for your crime, just means you’ve paid for your crime in full. Governors like to give commutations to real old prisoners, sick one’s who’re about to die and all. But here in Michigan, the governor sometimes gives ‘em to what we call 650-lifers. Basically, a stupid law was passed in the seventies that gave an automatic life sentence to anyone carrying 650 grams of a Class I. Ruined a lot of lives. I mean, an automatic life sentence for a non-violent drug offense? That’s absurd. Any system where a guy can get three life sentences in the same day is inherently broken.”

Bucky shivers. He’s sure he’s carried more than 650 g at a time. Very, very sure. And in all likelihood, Steve probably has, too, back in his dealing days.

“‘s fucked up.”

“Yeah.”

“So, what? You get these guys outta prison? Think they’re ready for the real world?”

“We try to get them out,” Steve says, a humble smile on his lips now. Bucky’s happy to see it there again. “It works sometimes. It pisses me off a lot of the time. But someone’s gotta do it. A lot of these fellas ain’t got anyone on the outside lookin’ out for them.”

Bucky bites back the feeling that Steve is too good for him for the umpteenth time. He knows if he brings it up, it’ll just make Steve sad again, but that doesn’t stop the ol’ constellations of scars on his body from prickling with shame. He tries to swallow away the sensation.

“Working on any good cases now?” Bucky asks, both interested and in need of distraction. He’s not done listening to Steve’s voice. 

“Actually, yes. I think we’ve got a real good chance at getting this one guy out. We’ve been working with him since he flopped his first Parole hearing five years ago, and I really think he’s got a shot this time. Deserves it, too. He’s a good man, just got caught up in the wrong crowd.”

“Wonder what that’s like,” Bucky jokes. Steve cracks a smile.

“Wise ass.”

“ _ Your  _ wise ass,” Bucky corrects with a wink, a lock of his long hair flopping in his face as he does it. Steve’s smile widens. “Tell me about him. Who’s the prisoner of the week?”

“Ha. It won’t be this week, but soon, hopefully. He’s a real somber fellow. White guy, not a drug on him, but he ran a pretty comprehensive underground boxing ring for a while, made a lot of dough, bribed a lot of cops and gambled his way straight to the hole. Plus a guy died in his boxing ring under his watch, so he got charged with ‘accidental killing.’ He’s been a well-behaved prisoner, though – no telling off the wardens or anything. And he’s got Catholic guilt like you wouldn’t believe.”

Bucky kicks Steve’s shins gently. “Hm, who does  _ that _ sound like?”

Steve rolls his eyes, but Bucky drags his socked foot slowly down the length of Steve’s calf to settle between Steve’s feet. Steve’s face only betrays his surprise for a split second, but it’s satisfying nonetheless.

“So, where’s he from?” Bucky inquires, looking right at Steve though his focus is definitely divided between the legal jargon and Steve’s foot crawling up his own calf.

“Hell’s Kitchen, originally.”

“You got a soft spot for New Yorkers, Rogers,” Bucky laughs, tilting his head back. Of course the guy’s from New York. Of  _ course  _ he is.

“What can I say?” Steve says, sticking his nose up a little in defiance. “I like ‘em a little rough around the edges.” Apparently emboldened, Steve  _ winks. _

To that, Bucky blushes down to his toes.

“So, uh, you think this guy’s got a good chance of gettin’ out of the can. Why him?”

“Sympathy card, mostly,” Steve says. “He’s not gonna be a menace to society. The guy’s blind in both eyes.”

 

Their quiet moment is eventually and predictably shattered by the daily chaos that is shift-change. Bucky could watch it a hundred times and never get used to it. Night-shifters hurl themselves downstairs, wiping the nap out of their eyes and zipping up uniforms, tying shoelaces, yelling across the kitchen with half-eaten slices of pizza in their mouths. The living room space goes from cozy nook to Grand Central Station in the span of about ten minutes, the day-shifters piling out of the van and looking for something to eat, somewhere to hang their coats. Bucky watches Dodge, Steve’s shepherd-mutt, dancing beneath the window with a tail like a speedboat rudder as folks unload and start trudging inside. The open door makes Bucky shiver – Christ, January is the armpit of the calendar year. And he thought  _ New York  _ was cold.

They come in one by one. There’s Sam Wilson – a national treasure if there ever was one. He’s got a goofy grin on his face that reveals the little gap between his teeth, and he’s still got his V.A. lanyard around his neck. It rests on a white polo that makes his skin glow. On Sam’s heels is Luke Cage, wannabe chef but currently the friendliest guy on the Chipotle line, and behind him is Scott Lang, whose pest control business doesn’t exactly thrive in the winter when everything dies (“Seriously,  _ where  _ do the bugs  _ go? _ ”) so he’s been taking care of small home repairs for the neighbors and putting in Old Man Fury’s new kitchen tile. 

Making orgasmic noises somewhere is Wade (the inferior Wilson, Sam calls him), a high school dropout but a smart son-of-a-bitch who pulled some  _ Breaking Bad  _ shit when the doctors told him he had the kind of cancer that was really just an expiration date. The genius made enough money to cover his chemo, went into remission, bragged about it to his co-workers, and served five years. He works a cell phone kiosk in the mall and strips on the weekends, now. Already, Wade’s reaching for his duffel to turn right back around and spend the night at his girlfriend’s – but not without flipping off at least three people and kissing  _ someone  _ on the mouth first.

Clint climbs out of the van, too, coming back from outpatient therapy wearing fluffy earmuffs. He signs eagerly at Bucky – Clint’s preferred it ever since the accident where he lost his hearing, and Bucky learned it when his ma went deaf. Bucky’s exactly zero percent surprised when he goes straight for the coffee maker (and even less surprised to hear him complain about Bruce’s new compostable K-cups for the keurig).

Meanwhile, Dodge pounces excitedly at Vision’s heels, who bends down to scratch him behind the ears. Bucky swears that guy is only nice to the dog and Wanda. Wanda works as a colorist at a salon, and she quickly jumps into Vision’s arms, smothering him with some PDA that makes everyone in a five foot radius groan. Wade turns around and throws a shoe at them. But Wanda’s left hand is about fifteen pounds heavier what with the rock Vision saved up for, so everyone’s  _ trying _ to give them a grace period for their (second) honeymoon phase. On the other hand, their room is  _ literally _ upstairs.

It’s hard to keep track of everyone – Bucky certainly doesn’t envy Sam and Steve the job of overseeing these idiots. Still, it’s an endearing sort of crazy. The fridge opening and closing, someone playing tug-o-war with Dodge and one of Steve’s socks, snow being tracked in left and right and boots stomped on the doormat in futile attempts to  _ not  _ track snow into the house. 

Bruce Banner is around here somewhere, probably shoveling cereal into his mouth before heading to one of the labs he works in at the ER. Jessica moved out, and Peter Parker moved back home with his aunt, but Loki and Thor, the intimidating step-brothers with impossible-to-place accents, are getting ready for another exciting night of unloading Home Depot boxes. 

Col. Rhodes walks in last, still in uniform – he’s been asked to do military recruitment at the high schools. He and Steve got into a real big argument about it last week, about how the military advertises in low-income and high-risk school districts like Detroit, which Rhodes saw as a positive (“Free education, man”) and Steve saw opposite (“It’s exploiting those kids.”) Bucky’d had to excuse himself, trying not to picture the face of the recruiter who plucked  _ him  _ from his high school in Brooklyn and caused all this, anyway.

Just as soon as they come, they go. Within minutes, the tidal wave of people has settled back into relative stillness. Sam disappears into his basement with a tired nod and a plate of leftovers that Bucky knows won’t make it back to the sink tonight, and Steve drifts upstairs to his own bedroom, still chewing on his pen and squinting at the laptop screen. Clint stomps off to FaceTime with his kids, and Scott’s scrolling quietly on his phone in front of the TV silently displaying football highlights. As the house calms, Bucky lets out a contented sigh, his eyes on the Christmas tree that someone probably ought to have taken down by now. The thing is shedding like mad and browning at the tips. It’s a week into the New Year, after all. But he’s Jewish – what does he know about Christmas tree etiquette? 

Still, he’s content. Things have been steadily going back to normal after the holiday hype. Even that – that there’s a ‘normal’ to go  _ back _ to – is a new and fluttery feeling in the pit of his stomach. He’s never been so excited to set an alarm clock in his life.

It’s hard for him to believe that this time last year he was tweaked out of his mind, wandering the streets of New York with a junkie named Craig – or was it Chris? – who’d discovered him chasing the dragon in the alley behind Sgt. Pepper’s, a reliable liquor store in the Bronx.  _ Reliable for not checking ID and selling more than just over-the-counter drugs,  _ he amends darkly. He vaguely remembers puking off the Brooklyn Bridge that night and waking up curled over a storm drain before stumbling back to Natasha’s apartment, smelling like sewer and piss.

There are times, he thinks, when it still shows. When, despite his careful facade and wooden sobriety chips, he fears that people can sense what he is, what he’s done. Like when he tries to tuck the same piece of hair behind his ear eighteen times, or when he stands up too fast and smiles through the vertigo, a taste of a feeling he used to know. There’s the scratching, of course, not hard, not ‘til he bleeds anymore, but a constant tingling under the skin that can’t be satiated. He drinks a  _ lot  _ of coffee and smokes like a chimney. Sometimes, he stares off into space too long, and when someone or something brings him back, he can’t help but wonder if it’s the damaged brain cells that did it.

They have names for everything these days.  _ Addiction. Tremors. Neurotransmitters. Disease. Narcotics.  _ It’s not enough to just tell your therapist you used, or hit the dragon, or got the shakes. You have to tell him your  _ heroin withdrawal symptoms _ are _ escalating.  _ Fuck, he has too much coffee one morning and they’re ready to diagnose him with “restless leg syndrome.” 

That can’t be a real thing.

Dr. Gupta’s been calling him – checking in, she says, but he knows better. They spend the first ten minutes of every phone call talking about physical therapy and the next eighty talking about weekend plans or Brooklyn or Steve. Dr. Gupta, he thinks, is sort of his friend now. He told her about his heroin addiction. She seemed to be impressed that he called it  _ addiction,  _ and he admittedly had Maggie at NA to thank for that. He thought she’d be mad; turned out she already knew.  _ He  _ shoulda known that she’d know, frankly. A Ph.D.  _ and  _ medical school? Yeah, she wasn’t about to be tricked by junkie, and a clumsy one at that. 

When he asks if he’ll ever get better in a whispered voice one late night over FaceTime, she doesn’t say  _ no,  _ but she says brain cells are a one-shot deal. Well, she says it fancier than that, but this is the gist. She says you only get so many of ‘em and they don’t regenerate or grow back. He lost a few dozen falling from the train in Afghanistan with the blood loss and untreated concussion and then went and played a little too hard with his remaining opioid receptors. Those brain cells are canned, one way or another. Those memories, she surmised, were gone forever. 

Lizards can grow back their tails, but he’ll never have his mind all in one piece again. How’s that for fucking fair?

This year, he vows, will be different. This year, he’ll take care of those little brain cells, all two and a half of ‘em. If 2017 stumbled its way into his dumpster fire of a life, then 2018 came in its Sunday best and asked about his family. It was exactly what he needs: a clean slate. This was going to be his fucking year. 

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler Alert: It's not his fucking year.

A few days after their night in the kitchen, Steve and Bucky sit in peaceable silence as he drives Bucky to work at the shop. Bucky’s technically been promoted. Well, Phil calls it a promotion – Bucky just thinks he got more hours and a fifty-cent raise ‘cause he works twice as fast now that he’s got all ten fingers in working order. But it’s not like he has a new title or anything, and Phil wouldn’t get him a new nametag if he had; the guy was cheaper than anyone Bucky knew, and he’d had immigrant Brooklyn Jews for parents for crying out loud. 

The prosthetic really is a gift, though, even if it makes Bucky feel like something out of a bad Transformers/Frankenstein crossover. Steve keeps saying he wants to paint it, but Bucky’s putting his foot down. He’s queer enough without a Van Gogh on his arm, thank you very much (secretly, he’s saving it for when he  _ really  _ needs to butter Steve up, and he’s sure the day will come).

But the steady handiwork keeps him sane. Turns out, slipping headphones in and losing himself under a car to The Who can be just as therapeutic as his Sunday morning sessions that Sam swears are  _ NOT CHURCH, BARNES _ spent not-crying (okay, a  _ little _ bit of crying) in Sam’s basement-office. Therapy leaves him feeling raw and rugged and exposed. Slipping underneath a solid Ford in good condition lets him stitch himself back up in peace.

It’s a sunny but frigid January day – Bucky’s headed back to work for the first time since the new year, and then Steve will head to Ypsi for work with the Quakers (Bucky snickers) – and he’s not so sure he’s really cut out for these Michigan winters. He tucks his scarf in a little more tightly from the passenger seat. He tries to be sly about it, but Steve turns up the heat. Bucky’s always cold, and Steve’s always paying attention.

“You should come with me,” Steve suggests suddenly. The guy has a way of saying whatever the hell comes to mind.

“Where?” Bucky asks around the hair tie he’s holding in his teeth. He pulls down the passenger visor to look in the mirror as he ties up his hair.

“The Parole Board hearing.”

“For the blind guy?” He looks over at Steve, both hands working to make a knot at the back of his head, the plates of his left hand sliding so precisely into place that he doesn’t get a single hair stuck in the prosthetic. If they weren’t talking about something serious, he would’ve said something saucy about his  _ excellent  _ hand-eye coordination.

Steve nods so stiffly that Bucky has déjà vu to his days at basic.

“I dunno, Rogers,” Bucky says skeptically, squirming a little in his seat. He rubs his thigh with his fingerless-gloved right hand, envisioning the skin beneath the denim, decorated with needle-shaped holes. His crimes written in his skin. He’s not so sure about being in a room crawling with law enforcement. His toes curl unpleasantly in his boots, and he counts to ten like Sam taught him.

“Think about it?” Steve pleads as he pulls up to Coulson’s Auto Parts. Bucky gives him a weak smile, grabs his sack lunch, and closes the door. He chews on it all day. What does he owe some fist-swinging bastard from Hell’s Kitchen?

_ Nothing _ , he has to remind himself.  _ This is about Steve. _

After lunch, he lays on a dolly, tucked beneath a little old lady’s Cadillac, working on the transmission and mulling over Steve’s request when he feels his heart rate begin to spike. The anxiety’s been real bad lately. He does what the yuppies told him to do in his NA meetings: acknowledge the craving, honor it, and let it go. Some days it works better than others. He’s never quite figured out what it means to  _ honor _ the fact that what would really fucking soothe him right now is a morphine drip or a baggie of China White. Ain’t much honorable about that.

Licking his lips, he decides he wants a smoke. After a quick pocket-check, he kicks himself for forgetting his pack in Sam’s room last night. Bruce’ll be happy – he keeps trying to get Bucky to quit; he’s been all about the New Year’s resolutions this year, started taking anger management classes and everything. But if lung cancer’s the price to pay to live in Steve’s house, beat the headaches, and stop shooting up – he’ll take it any day. 

The rest of the day drags by at a snail’s pace; the Cadillac is totally unwilling to disclose any of its secrets, and the throb in the back of Bucky’s head pulls him away from his work. Instead, he finds himself distracted, thinking of blind prisoners and the disappointed way Steve’s lips will pucker when Bucky tells him he doesn’t want to go, even as Steve tells Bucky that he understands, that he was asking too much. Carrying the blame, as always. No wonder those shoulders are so broad – it’s ‘cause Steve carries the damn  _ weight of the world  _ on them every godforsaken day.

Everyone’s so damn  _ understanding.  _ It drives Bucky up the wall. He’s not made of  _ glass. _

Steve’s Jeep pulls into the lot at five like clockwork. Steve may be a lot of things, but late isn’t one of them.

Bucky grunts a greeting, still wiping engine oil off his hands and not feeling particularly cheery. He’s especially wary that Steve will try to corner him about the public hearing again, which he really can’t handle right now. When Steve opens his mouth, Bucky braces for the worst.

“Spirits?” Steve asks instead, hand outstretched with an unopened pack of Bucky’s favorite cigarette. Bucky’s mouth opens and closes.

“How’d you know?”

“Lucky guess.”

“Sam tell ya?”

“You’re no fun.”

 

The ride home is quiet. It gets dark early. Bucky frowns against the bitter cold coming in through the open passenger window, but he’s not gonna hotbox the damn car with his tobacco smoke and whatever the hell else they put in cigarettes these days. He taps the ash off, letting it fall like snow outside the window, and brings the cigarette back to his lips, cherry glowing red. Steve seems kinda tense – maybe a long day at work, maybe something else – and it’s all Bucky can do to pray Steve doesn’t bring up the public hearing again. He dumps the cigarette butt in the mug Steve’s set up between them as a makeshift ashtray; it says  _ I like big mugs and I cannot lie.  _ A Christmas present from Wade. The thing’s already almost full, and Bucky stifles a cough.

They pull into the makeshift PVC-pipe carport wordlessly about twenty minutes later. It strikes Bucky – too late, always too late – that Steve’s silence might have nothing to do with him or the hearing at all. Shit, he’s so bad at this.

“You, uh, good?” Bucky finally pipes up, just as Steve kills the engine. His jaw looks like it could cut glass.

Steve turns to him, his blue eyes raking almost hungrily over Bucky’s face. He rests a big hand on Bucky’s cheek, tender despite the storm brewing in Steve’s eyes, fingers still warm from the vents next to the steering wheel. His eyes continue to search Bucky for something. What?  _ What, Steve? _

When Steve doesn’t say anything, just parts his lips and continues to scan Bucky’s face, Bucky tries again. “Hi.”

“Someone died today.”

“Oh, Stevie,” Bucky whispers, his face crumpling even more than Steve’s, somehow. Bucky has no context, no clue – is it someone in the house? An old friend? Has Steve any family left? Somehow it doesn’t matter right then and there – someone died, and it’s hurting Steve. His Steve, whose eyes are now swimming.

“It’s okay,” Steve says, breaking their eye contact and wiping his nose. “Happens.” A shrug.

“C’mere,” Bucky says, reaching over the console between them awkwardly, just trying to get his arms full of Steve, who leans against him bonelessly from the driver’s seat. 

Bucky almost doesn’t hear Steve whisper into his hood. “Just a guy at one of the prisons. Up for parole in a coupla months. Supposed to meet him tomorrow. His C.O. called. Shanked in the back in one of the showers.”

Bucky kisses the top of his head, his right hand threading through Steve’s short hair.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

 

When Steve’s recovered, they come in through the front door. Bucky’s relieved to discover that there is a good deal of whooping and hollering in the kitchen at the moment, which will probably distract Steve from his shitty day and hopefully distract him from Steve’s looming invitation to the upcoming hearing.

It takes a couple minutes for them to put together what’s all happening. To Bucky’s amusement, it appears Wade and Thor are knee deep in an argument over the order of operations when it comes to pouring milk into cereal. Evidently, Thor is a stringent cereal-first milk-second kind of guy (Bucky knew he liked him) and Wade is defending the abomination that is pouring  _ cereal  _ into a bowl  _ milk _ . They’re surrounded by what must be almost every housemate and even a few neighbors. Catlike, Bucky squeezes himself into the kitchen, drawn to the commotion, and he can feel Steve following him on his six, a warm hand still hovering, featherlight, at the small of his back. 

Thor booms thunderously, “I promise I could tell if the milk was poured first. That’s an atrocity, an insult to mankind!” slamming a fist on the kitchen counter. This leads to a flurry of movement and more yelling – suddenly Loki’s using kitchen towels to cover both Thor’s and Wade’s eyes, and Clint’s carefully using up the rest of the Captain Crunch to prove a point. The experiment’s all set up – diligently, it would’ve passed any middle school science fair standard as far as Bucky could tell – and the taste tests begin.

As Thor brings the spoon from the first bowl of cereal to his mouth, the room goes quieter than Bucky’d ever thought possible with these hooligans. They wait with bated breath for his declaration. Thor swallows, his mouth turning up at the corners.

“Milk first, cereal on top. And it’s disgusting,” he announces smugly. 

The room erupts with a cacophony of  _ OHHHHHHH _ as all of the people with any semblance of sanity cheer him on. He’d guessed right. Bucky crosses his arms and leans against the back counter, happy to observe the mess of high-fives and fist-bumps that ensues. Thor even flexes his biceps for good measure, which only causes the decibels to increase. Scott Lang pretends to faint and starts fanning himself.

Steve nudges up against Bucky, adopting the same arms-crossed posture as they lean against the counter in the background, his own biceps exposed and stretching the material. When would Captain Tight-Shirts get the memo that stores  _ do sell clothes in your size, Steve _ . But Steve’s grinning, and everyone is screeching about 2% milk and how Thor must’ve cheated, and  _ besides _ , he had 50/50 odds! Clint claps Wade on the back, but the sore loser is still trying to egg everyone on and call Thor’s bluff. A few people seem to be chanting “rematch.”

“I’m going upstairs,” Steve says quietly so only Bucky can hear. With a chaste kiss that only half-lands on Bucky’s lips, Steve turns and saunters upstairs, each step creaking under his weight. 

“What’s good, Barnes?” Sam asks as he materializes from the crowd, coming over and giving him a one-armed hug and clap on the back.

“Hey, Sam,” Bucky replies, smiling but feeling his own exhaustion. As the tension he was holding in his body all day dissolves, it’s replaced only by the feeling of wanting to crawl into his bed. “You feel strongly about this milk-cereal debate?”

“Man, the only thing I’m feeling is that I’m not gonna have anything to eat for breakfast tomorrow,” Sam laughs, white teeth flashing. 

“Amen,” Bucky agrees. “I think these fools ought to buy us all bagels tomorrow.”

“And coffee.”

“And coffee,” Bucky concedes. A cup of coffee would hit the spot right about now. “I think I’m gonna hit the sack, actually.”

“Hit the...sac?” Sam says with a wink, eyebrows dancing.

“Can it, Wilson.”

Despite Sam Wilson’s gap-toothed amusement and innuendo, Bucky made no moves to join Steve upstairs. Rather, he turned for the bathroom on the first floor to wash off the day’s grime. Even the cigarette couldn’t get rid of his pounding headache.

That night, he slept in his own bedroom, questioning up until the exact moment he fell asleep if he should have just gone upstairs and curled up against Steve.

  
  
  


The next night, Bucky pops his head in to Clint’s room. He’d knock, but he’s not sure Barton’s got his hearing aids in at this hour. 

_ Who dares disturb my slumber?  _ Clint signs from his bed, hearing aids on the nightstand; he’s wearing Spongebob pajamas that Bucky’s sure his kids got him for Christmas, and he looks equal parts stupid and adorable. Hell, the man is wearing his  _ reading glasses.  _ The desk lamp’s on, but the room is dim, and Clint’s got a comic book folded across his chest.

_ It is I _ , Bucky replies with a sweeping gesture as he comes into the room, full bravado.  _ What’s up? Can I come in? _

Clint waves him in.  _ Nothing much. Going to sleep soon. What brings you, young Padawan? _

_ It’s Steve,  _ Bucky signs, plopping himself in Clint’s desk chair.  _ He wants me to go to this public hearing where the Parole Board decides if this dude gets out of prison or not. I don’t get it.  _

_ You don’t want to go?  _ Clint signs back, eyebrows raised.

_ I just don’t  _ get  _ it. Does he want to scare me? Does he think I’m gonna relapse or something? Who takes a heroin junkie to a prison? _

_ Aw, Buck. _

Jeez. It’s bad enough when Steve gets dopey on him, but it’s about a hundred times worse to see that piteous look on Barton’s face. You never want to pity from the deaf guy who survived a meth lab explosion, ruined his marriage, and nearly lost the rights to both his kids, even if Bucky feels a little bad for thinking it.

_ I don’t know, I don’t know.  _ Bucky runs his hands through his long hair, which slowly falls back into place along the part. 

Even though he doesn’t have the hearing aids in, Clint makes an effort to speak aloud, which Bucky knows means Clint thinks it’s important. “He probably just wants you to see what he does. The work means a lot to him, near and dear to his oversized heart. If you’re scared, don’t go. I know I sure as hell wouldn’t. But it doesn’t mean anything more than that. He’s not trying to smoke you out – er, no pun intended. The guys here, whether they’re fucking you or not, have got your back. Always will. I promise you Steve’s not trying to pull a fast one. No one’s trying to hurt you anymore. Okay?”

_ I’m just trying to figure out what I’m afraid of _ , Bucky signed back at Clint with a heavy sigh.

 

\---

Steve drops the parole hearing thing for the time being, so Bucky mulls over what Clint said all week instead. It’s safe to say that Barton’s earned himself a pretty high-up position in Bucky’s short list of friends. They share the same dark sense of humor, and the only thing they take with their coffee is sarcasm. 

Which is why it strikes Bucky that he hasn’t said anything to Barton yet about his  _ other  _ problem. He opens the hood of the Ford (so many  _ Fords _ , damn you Motor City) he’s been working on, wrench in hand and lost in thought. He replays Clint’s words in his head.

_ The guys here, whether they’re fucking you or not, have got your back. _

_ Whether they’re  _ fucking _ you or not. _

Contrary to, well, probably everyone’s belief in the house, he and Steve are  _ not _ fucking.  At all. Not that that was his idea, but it was the truth of it all the same. 

At first, when Bucky had only just moved in, they hadn’t fucked on principle. They were encumbered by the awkward dance of  _ can we?  _ and  _ should we?  _ and  _ you’re my landlord and I’m an addict. _ Bucky was still deep in recovery; everything was fresh and fragile.

Just when they finally stopped being  _ idiots  _ and actually  _ talked  _ about their fucking feelings, back in Brooklyn where things were just easier, Bucky went under the knife for the arm Stark gave him. For free. The offer of a lifetime. But it came with strict no-fun-allowed rules set by Dr. Gupta. The arm healed slow. They couldn’t let it get infected, wanted to make sure all the neural connections stayed live, couldn’t let the thing be jostled for fear it would heal all wrong. Even if he’d been allowed a roll in the hay, he’d been far too exhausted between the physical therapy and NA meetings and Skype sessions with the doc to even think about blowing his load.

On top of that, Steve was a virgin. Well, Bucky’d given him a few orgasms he’d never forget, but they’d never been  _ inside  _ each other the way Bucky wanted them to be, the way he thought they were  _ supposed  _ to be. They hadn’t talked about it or anything, but Bucky had a hunch that Steve’s virginity was important, something that he cared about. Sex wasn’t just something they could do unceremoniously on a Tuesday afternoon. It had to be special. Hell, they were 26. Anyone who waited that long was waiting for something  _ good.  _

But even when Dr. Gupta gave the resounding all-clear on FaceTime with a smirk that was borderline unprofessional (to which Bucky grinned back equally unprofessionally) and Steve told him firmly that he was ready, there was still no sex.

Whiskey dick is an embarrassing pain in the ass (or well, lack thereof –  _ whatever _ ). Heroin dick is a horse of a different color.

Scratch that. If he thinks about horses and dicks at the same time ever again, he’ll  _ never  _ get it up. Which honestly… wouldn’t be that different from where he’s currently at. No matter how turned on he is, how hot and flushed Steve is with his own cock thick and ready, Bucky’s stays down. He’s never been…  _ shy  _ before. Not like this. But nearly every time they start fooling around, his dick refuses to stand at attention. Now, Bucky’s not the ‘man’s man’ he tried to be in high school or anything, and he’s coming around on his masculinity and his queerness and all those good things, but damn is it undignifying to not get a hard-on in the sack. Especially when your best guy is packing what Steve’s got swinging between his legs. Christ.

Steve is patient, as ever. It just sucks that he has to be.

It’s not  _ just _ the heroin, either. He hasn’t used since last June – Bucky’s no doctor, but he’s got to believe that putting seven months between him and his last hit has got to mean his blood’s clean now. Which means his dick should be rising to the fucking occasion. It did in Brooklyn all those weeks ago for Christ’s sake. And he’d gotten it up plenty of times when he was being a fucking degenerate alley cat who sometimes left needles in his arms for days. But in those days, sex… well, he’d cared a lot more about the cash after than the ride itself – his own orgasm had been of little consequence. He hadn’t even been paying attention to his own cock.

What’s an orgasm to a rush of heroin?

Christ, he shouldn’t think like that. He  _ can’t  _ think like that. An orgasm with Steve’s got to be better than a hit of dope. It… it  _ has  _ to be. It will be. It _ is. _

The real roadblock, he knows, isn’t the heroin at all. Well, exacerbated by it, sure, but it’s the new drugs – the legal ones, of course, that the psychiatrist put him on in November when Steve’d found out the hard way (spooning Bucky in the middle of the night, in fact) just how terrorized Bucky was by his nightmares. 

_ He remembers, chest heaving, the feeling of falling, the screams tearing out of him before he could swallow them. The stretch of Afghani desert, the stench of his rotting stump of an arm, the boiling sun, the chunks of metal still falling from the explosion, the burn of his eyes in the smoke, the curious eyes of children hovering over the dying white man but refusing to help him–  _ that’s when Steve’d gripped him with two arms. “It isn’t real, Buck, it’s not real, come back to me.” And then insisted on a psychiatric appointment.

Bucky’d resisted going to the crazy-people doctor, but Steve had looked real scared, and Bucky was trying to follow all the rules and do things right this time around. Sam drove him. The doctor was overweight and smelled like breath mints. 

PTSD, the doctor’d given him. It was like getting the wrong order at a restaurant and not being able to send it back. It tasted sour in his mouth. “PTSD.” Alphabet soup. They gave him a prescription for an antidepressant and mood stabilizer, which in fine print said that they were death sentences for his libido, but he wouldn’t realize that ‘til later. Steve had let him get away with skipping the pain meds for his operation in New York (barely), but antipsychotic drugs were a different story. “Bucky, if you were diagnosed with diabetes, you’d take insulin. Brain stuff’s no different. The doctor gave you a diagnosis, ain’t nothing to be ashamed of. Shell shock’s real common around these parts. Lot of my clients come out of prison with PTSD. And if you’d take insulin for diabetes, there’s nothing wrong with taking these for PTSD.”

Bucky had  _ harumph _ ed and humored him. Steve was usually right when it came to things like this. It boggled Bucky how they were the same age, but Steve seemed so much  _ wiser.  _

If the combination of past heroin use and his new prescriptions wasn’t enough to keep his dick flaccid, he also had to get out of his own damn head. Because this? This was different. Steve was different. It wasn’t going to be a quick fuck; this was making love or whatever soft people call it. This was the kind of sex he wanted to take slow, and the longer they waited, the more it got built up in his head. Steve was someone he wanted to impress, and he wasn’t all that impressive to begin with. Christ, he didn’t even have his G.E.D. Steve went to Wayne State. Steve got out of the drug business the second shit hit the fan and turned his life around to become the head of a household of healing addicts. He was a fearless leader. It gave Bucky a fucking complex, being vulnerable with Steve, who was so much… just,  _ better _ than him. Bucky was used to sex being anonymous. And whatever he was trying to do with Steve was just about as far from that as you could get. 

So, well, yeah – they’ve been taking it slow – slower than Bucky’s ever taken it before, though admittedly he’s probably given more head to people whose names he  _ didn’t _ know than to people he did. For Bucky, at least, it’s nothing to stress over. He has more experience than Steve. So what? In a lot of ways, these are firsts for him, too. Giving a blow job to a prostitute so she might give him her Percocet is nothing like watching Steve writhe beneath his tongue. They are planets apart. Steve laces his fingers in Bucky’s hair, keeps Bucky’s name on his lips from start to finish. Steve is there the next morning, and the morning after that. Steve says please and always reciprocates. Steve says, “You want to grab dinner later?” and keeps a pack of American Spirits in his pocket even though he doesn’t smoke. Plus, cuddles. But still, it’s not  _ sex _ , and Bucky has  _ needs. _

The first time it happened, Bucky didn’t even realize it.

“Baby?” Steve had said, in a voice as small as Steve used to be (Bucky learned that Steve bulked up big time in his dealing days, but was a scrawny, scabby-kneed punk in the years prior, something that brought Bucky a deep, secret joy). Bucky pulled his mouth off of Steve’s exposed collar bone with a wet  _ pop,  _ his eyes still blown with lust. He didn’t even get to check his handiwork because one look at Steve’s face told him something was wrong.

“What is it?” Bucky asked, breathless, eyebrows stitching together. They were all kinds of twisted in Steve’s bed upstairs, mostly naked except for Steve’s undershirt and one of Bucky’s socks.

“I’m... you’re...” Steve tried and failed to get out. Instead, he looked awkwardly down at their tangled bodies, and Bucky had followed his line of sight until he saw the obvious discrepancy Steve was attempting to point out. “Are you, uh, am I doing this...right?” Steve asked, voice inflecting in all the wrong places.

Steve’s erection was a fucking ode to Adam. Bucky was limp beside him.

He hurried to explain. “Oh, God. Yes, yes, Steve, I still...it’ll...I’ll warm up to it, I’m sure.” A look of frustration-turned-determination flickered across Bucky’s face as his jaw clenched and his eyebrows lowered darkly. Bucky pressed his lips down against Steve’s, too hard, too urgent, trying to  _ force  _ his way into an erection. He kissed like he was fighting, panting heavily on top of Steve, hands gripping Steve’s shoulders too tight – Steve flinched under him at the aggressiveness of the kissing, the hard press of Bucky’s hips against his erection, Bucky squeezing his ass cheeks together as if that would somehow push his dick up to a standing position. 

“Bucky,  _ Buck _ ,” Steve interrupted, stopping Bucky from hurting him or himself. “Stop. It’s okay, really.”

“I swear it’ll happen, it’s – I don’t know, maybe I’m tired or whatever. This has never happened before, I, maybe if I was on bottom–” Bucky muttered in one breath, peeling himself off of Steve’s chest and into a straddling position, cupping his fleshy, unfeeling, piece of shit of a dick in his hand.

“It’s normal, Bucky. Sometimes even I can’t–”

“Don’t.” Bucky whispered. “Just don’t.” Bucky’d jumped off of Steve like he’d been stung, recoiling from Steve’s outstretched hand and the sad little tilt of his head. 

“Okay,” Steve said amenably, doing as instructed. Christ. Everyone was always listening to Bucky,  _ validating _ Bucky. Doing the things he asked. He knew it shouldn’t, but it fucking pissed him off. He’d wanted Steve to be… mad, or something. His being understanding, always calm, collected… it gave Bucky nothing to push back on. He was pissed, and he wanted to  _ hit something  _ because it wasn’t fucking fair. He was a fire with nothing to burn. 

Refusing to make eye contact, Bucky had lay down next to Steve, a careful inch of space between them. He’d watched Steve’s erection jealously, could practically see the blood re-enter Steve’s circulation. Steve was kind and quiet – afraid of breaking the fragile silence that was holding back whatever emotions were on the horizon. Like a true gentleman, Steve didn’t mention blue balls even once, just watched the ceiling to give Bucky the dignity of feeling whatever he needed to feel.

Finally, Steve broke. “Bucky, I just… I just want you to know it don’t bother–”

At that, Bucky leapt out of the bed, pulling on his boxers and other discarded clothes. “I need a smoke.” He left Steve’s room, closing the door behind him as he went with a cig dangling between his lips.

In all reality, he should probably tell Barton about it. Get some advice. Clint’s got two kids of his own – he must be doing  _ something _ right downstairs. But Bucky spent the first twenty-some years of his life building up the courage to tell  _ anyone  _ that he wanted to be with a man; he’d need another twenty before he was ready to admit he  _ couldn’t  _ be with a man. 

  
  



	3. Chapter 3

Steve doesn’t bring it up. Bucky  _ certainly _ doesn’t bring it up. Anything remotely sexual now is a careful thing, not a rip-off-your-clothes-in-the-heat-of-the-moment activity but a cautious, step-by-step process. A  _ does this feel okay? _ thing. A  _ tell me if you need me to stop  _ thing. A  _ my body is a minefield, watch your step or I’ll explode and not in a good way  _ thing. He and Steve are working on it. At least, they tell themselves they are working on it. 

They are not working on it. Not really. They roll around in the sheets, sometimes. Odds are equally likely that they end panting and sweaty as they are Bucky swearing and turning stoic and unfriendly, shutting himself off. It almost isn’t worth the risk. They try less and less frequently.

Admittedly, there’s plenty to keep them distracted that January.

One Sunday morning, Steve comes downstairs to start a pot of coffee to find Jessica Jones on the love seat. After a pleasantly-surprised  _ what’re-ya-doing-here?,  _ a big scoop of a hug (Jessica’s feet definitely left the floor), and a kiss on the cheek, Luke saunters down the stairs in a button down and slacks, looking sheepish and handsome. Steve raises an eyebrow at her with a smile on his face, and she shrugs before skipping over to Luke and planting a very  _ not  _ platonic kiss on him. 

“You kids have fun,” Steve laughs as they scurry out of the house like teenagers. He waves his mug – a big red one that just reads “NOPE” in all caps – by way of goodbye, a little disbelieving but happy with the development. Jeez, this house was turning into an episode of  _ The Bachelor. _

To add to the wonderful but never-ending chaos, Peter Parker comes through right at the end of January with even better news – acceptance into an engineering and math summer camp at the University of Michigan, full scholarship. The kid’s a damn rocket scientist. On rides home from work, Steve gushes that maybe in a year or two he’ll try to set up something for Peter with Stark, maybe an internship or, or  _ something _ . Peter has more people in his corner than he knew what to do with. He’s going to college, that much is certain. None of them had said it, but Bucky knows what they’re all thinking: at least  _ one _ of ‘em was gettin’ out. 

In the interim, there’s plenty of snow to be shoveled, cars to be tuned up, and Thai take-out to be ordered. Wanda promises to teach Bucky how to make DIY shivs in case he ever goes to prison in exchange for honest commentary while she creates wedding Pinterest boards. Clint’s kids come around for unsupervised visits again, so there was a lot of time spent child-proofing the house. A den of ex-convicts and ex-junkies wasn’t exactly a popular choice for play dates – Clint’d become obsessed with cleaning the place up before the social worker came over.

Maria Hill, the  _ apparently _ chill public defender, comes through on the last Saturday of January with a little tower of plastic cups in her arms – drug testing. 

“Do all public defenders do in-home tests for their clients?” Bucky asks skeptically when she finally leaves, the click of her heels making him uncomfortable as he sprawls shirtless on the couch in sweatpants with a bowl of cereal balanced on his thigh. He doesn’t have to get tested with the county – never been caught, officially at least. He spent a couple overnights in jail back in Brooklyn, but they never got him on the right stuff. Petty theft. Trespassing. Natasha, bless her heart, was a bailout machine. And Bucky was real good at pretending he wasn’t high as a kite. The others weren’t quite so lucky. Scott had boasted an ankle bracelet for a while, and Jessica used to have to blow into an at-home breathalyzer device every night after her second DUI. 

“Nah, she offers to come over here,” Scott says, locking the door behind Hill. “She and Loki have a bet on who’s better at foosball that she takes pretty seriously.  _ I  _ think she’s got eyes for Sam.”

“It’s weird,” Bucky replies, mouth full of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

“Life’s weird, bud,” Scott shrugs, leaving the kitchen.

Everyone passes the drug screening, and with that, the house releases the collective breath it’s been holding.

Most of the hours in the day are filled. Bucky makes sure to call the people who matter – his sister, who’d put their dad on the phone if she was home, and Nat, who he ached to see again. He always makes time for Dr. Gupta; he tells her his hand’s working so good, he might just take up piano again. 

Busy. That’s what he is. For the first time in a long damn time, Bucky is busy, which iss pretty convenient for a guy who has a lot of things he doesn’t want to think about. 

 

\---

 

Bucky is glad for February. It is a brief month, which makes it harder to fuck up. It is the month of love, which Bucky will never admit, and twenty-eight days reminds him of the moon, and of women, and of thighs. It’s Black History month, so they do Soul Food Sundays and Sam tapes pictures of famous Black people – artists, activists, researchers, athletes, musicians – to every surface of the house. Anita Hill has a place of honor next to Malcolm X on the refrigerator. Langston Hughes is on the DVD cabinet, and President Barack Obama smiles at Bucky when he washes his hands in the bathroom. 

It is also a new month, and that feels like it means something.

When they pull into the carport one Friday night after work, just when Bucky thinks  _ maybe _ Steve’s letting him off the hook, Steve tries again, the stubborn bastard. 

“Have you, er, thought more about the parole thing?”

“Been tryin’  _ not  _ to think about it, pal,” Bucky admits as he climbs out the passenger door and into the slushy days-old snow. 

“It’d mean a lot to me if you came,” Steve says, sauntering over to Bucky’s side door. 

“Ohhhh no, you don’t,” Bucky complains as Steve gets the glint in his eyes. Bucky knows what that means. He sighs, defeated, as Steve tackles him into the snow. The man loves the stuff more than any adult he’s ever met, more even than the actor in the green tights of Clint’s favorite Christmas movie, and the snow-tackling has become routine. “Christ, Steve,” he wheezes, laughing despite himself under Rogers’ unyielding mass. He can feel the snow sticking in his long hair.

“Please, Buck?” It’s not fair. Steve’s gone all cute and giggly and his cheeks are all flushed and  _ dammit _ , he’s good. Bucky tries to change the subject.

“I’m freezin’ my ass off, here!”

“We can warm that up later,” Steve says, frowning despite the innuendo. “Buck… ”

Their faces are inches apart. Bucky’s ears are fucking cold, and Steve Rogers weighs a fuck-ton.

“Alright,  _ alright _ , I’ll  _ think  _ about it _.  _ Now get off me, jerk.” 

Steve wiggles on top of him excitedly, like a freaking puppy who hasn’t control of his tail, and Bucky’s satisfied to know he can incite that kind of happiness in another human being. Especially Steve, who’s so damn serious all the time. Finally, he caves to Steve’s antics, throwing his arms up around Steve’s neck and pulling him down so their lips meet. It’s sloppy and cold, and their hot breath swirls around their reddening mouths.

Just then, the front door swings open loudly.

“It is eighteen degrees outside. You two idiots best get your asses in here,” comes Sam’s voice, incredulous. “White people...” he mutters to himself, turning back to go in the house.

“Coming,  _ Dad _ ,” Bucky chirps back, though he’s sure Sam can’t hear him anymore. Steve nuzzles him, happily embarrassed. 

They stumble into the house, encumbered by their layers, and begin unraveling. Scarves and gloves, knit hats and winter coats. No matter how many times Bucky stomps his combat boots against the doormat, he brings a trail of dirty snow melt in his wake.

“I just mopped there,” Banner complains, shuffling down the hall with a bowl of something that smells delicious. Bucky gives him his best apologetic grimace but turns to the kitchen, hungry and curious.

“Rhodey, my man,” Bucky says excitedly; he loves when the Colonel cooks. He makes the meanest batch of chili Bucky’s ever had. Bucky throws an arm around Rhodes’s flanneled shoulder jovially, hopping into cooking duty with bright eyes and a warm smile, taste-testing a little more than strictly necessary. Luke joins them after a while – probably because he’s picky about his spices – and Steve wanders off upstairs to get work done. It’s a quiet, cozy Friday night, and they’re gonna be able to afford heat this month, so everyone’s just that much cozier. He almost forgets that he’s practically agreed to go to the prison with Steve.

Almost.

 

\---

 

“Is it me, Buck? Am I doing something wrong, or not… not how you like it? Am I ... not... I dunno. Good enough?” Steve rambles and then hides his face, and Bucky’s so surprised by the question that he chokes on his answer.

Sputtering, he manages, “ _ What the actual fuck are you on about, Rogers? _ ” He’s eloquent in bed.

“It’s okay if it is, I mean I understand, I’m not, y’know, as experienced as you are,” Steve finishes in a rush of words. “If there’s something else, or someone else, I mean, I know you like women too, I just… if there was something I could do to turn you on, I’m just, I’m sorry–”

“Steven Grant Rogers,” Bucky starts, waiting for that pair of sad eyes to meet his before he continues. He’s suddenly very aware of his dick dangling in the space between them. Not dangling,  _ moping.  _ He hasn’t had a proper hard-on in three weeks. But he soldiers on, because Steve needs to hear this. “You are quite literally the  _ sexiest _ man I have ever laid my eyes – or hands – on. Stevie, you are beautiful. And you are  _ so good at this.  _ I’m so turned on I feel like my teeth are gonna fall out. This is about heroin. This is so  _ not  _ about you or anything you’re doing wrong, Steve. Christ, I  _ love  _ you.” 

_ Oh shit. _

Guess it’s the month of love after all.

He didn’t mean to drop the L-word, and  _ definitely  _ didn’t plan on dropping it while his dick sat limply between them. But here they are. Go figure. Steve picks out the word instantly.

“You... love me?” Steve asks, so innocently it hurts. His eyes are fucking sparkling, his wet lips still open in surprise. He blinks a few times. Bucky can see him fixating on the word, turning it over in his head. He looks like he’s gonna do the cute wiggling thing.

Well shoot, that certainly got Steve to perk up.

“Y’know, I guess I do,” Bucky admits, smiling dopily despite himself, his chest suddenly swelling happily. Below him, naked and beautiful, is the golden boy of his dreams. Tall, caring, determined,  _ good.  _ And all his. Bucky smiles wider, licks his lips. Wiggles a little bit himself.

Steve beams. Just beams. Bucky leans down to knock noses, but Steve’s hands push back on his chest and keep him at bay. Bucky raises an inquisitorial eyebrow.

“You mean that? You really love me?” Steve inspects him, hesitant and searching his face for something. 

“Yes, punk, quit askin’ before I change my mind.” Bucky rolls his eyes fondly, swooping down to kiss Steve’s laughing mouth.

“Jerk” Steve retorts against Bucky’s lips. He deepens the kiss, opening his mouth for Bucky. Bucky knows that Steve usually likes it when he takes the lead, preferring to not be in charge, for once. But this Steve is different; he’s hungry and wanting beneath him and cups Bucky’s ass in his hands as Bucky grinds back down onto him.

Steve hums in the back of his throat.

Normally, Steve doesn’t like to fool around if Bucky doesn’t get to play too, but he’s so turned on at the word ‘love’ that his erection throbs against Bucky’s hand conspicuously, and they blissfully forget – for now – the asymmetry between their dicks. Bucky lubes up his right hand (it’s just about the  _ only  _ thing he lubes up these days) and gives Steve’s cock a light squeeze, which Steve obediently arches into, hips already coming off the mattress.

“Oh baby, you’re  _ ready,  _ aren’t you?” Bucky teases. Steve looks like he’s going to pass out. He moves his index finger over Steve’s head and is rewarded with a sharp intake of breath. The muscles of Steve’s body ripple, the damn Greek god, and Bucky watches the definition in his thighs, all the lines and curves of him. He strokes the length again, watches the sensation roll through him, feels Steve press against his hand for more. He moves faster, building rhythm, as Steve writhes in the sheets.

“Right there, right there, aw  _ jeez _ . Again,” Steve begs, open-mouthed.

“What is it, baby?”

“ _ Say it again.” _

“Steven G. Rogers, I fucking  _ love you _ . Now come for me.” Bucky says, his hand still pumping away at Steve as he presses up against his shaking body. He knows just how to time it so that his lips are bearing down on Steve’s when the moment strikes, and Steve moans hotly against him, body seizing with white-hot pleasure and making him see colors.

He orgasms so hard that even Bucky’s tweaked-out cock gives a half-hearted twitch.

With a lopsided grin, Bucky pulls his hand gently off of Steve and climbs off of him, watches as Steve’s breathing returns to normal, circling his nipple with his fingertips to elicit the occasional coming-down shudder. He likes it when Steve gets all twitchy. Steve smiles, giddy, one arm thrown over his eyes. He reaches down to feel the sticky cum on his own stomach, clearly feeling too lazy to clean it up. Bucky curls up against his side and feels Steve’s other arm encircle him, draw him close. He feels the press of Steve’s lips to the top of his head.

“I love you,” Steve says, and Bucky can hear the smile in his voice. “I really, really do, Buck.”

An orgasm would’ve been nice. This is better.

 

\---

 

Saturdays are for the farmer’s market. Wanda likes Eastern Market, with its big red brick arches, its murals, its charm. Bucky likes that there are butchers – real butchers that remind him of Brooklyn – and flowers, and fresh squash, and jams in every flavor. He met a woman who keeps bees, once. He liked her an awful lot.

Steve likes it, too. Usually, Saturdays are Wanda-Bucky time, but Steve had asked with puppy dog eyes to come today, so they drag him along as they hit all of their regular vendors. What they all like is that it’s economical. Bucky learns that Michigan has something called double-up food bucks, which means their food stamps – SNAP, they call it, which he thinks is stupid, as if giving it a cutesy name covers up the fact that people can’t feed their families on minimum wage  – count for double if they buy fresh produce at a farmers market. Bucky doesn’t believe it, but Rhodey said that Wanda, as the freshly minted house treasurer, had cried when she read the news about double up. 

Well, maybe he does believe. She was always surprising him.

They meander the market, slower than usual because Steve keeps getting distracted by everything and excitedly tugs Bucky in a new direction every ten minutes, but it’s warm inside and Bucky doesn’t feel rushed. Unlike fancy lawyers like Hill, he doesn’t take his work home with him. Weekends are for relaxing, only. 

When the groceries are bought – eggs, milk, loads of pasta sauce, tea, syrup, apples, spinach – Wanda plops down with Steve at a table. She nurses a Chai latte, pulling  _ War and Peace  _ out of one of her reusable grocery bags and finding her page. Steve’s got his sketchbook out, now, doodling, and Bucky smiles under his ball cap like it’s a secret, how happy he is. He fingers a few more plums that he was inspecting, hoping for a snack, but he keeps stealing glances at the two of them until the Latino vendor swats his hand and tells him to stop playing with his food. Bucky apologizes, still smiling, and hands over change for the fruit.

 

On Sunday morning, as is routine, Bucky stomps down the unreliable stairs to the basement – Sam’s quarters. Bucky finds it ironic that Sam chose the basement when he and Steve went in together on this old house – it’s covered in posters of airplanes and fighter jets. When they’re not short for time, Sam tells Bucky about his Air Force days; it never made sense to Bucky why someone who loved the sky so much would choose to live in the windowless basement, but he’s sure Sam’s got his demons, too. He wonders if his therapist has a therapist.

“Welcome to my dungeon,” Sam says as a way of greeting, standing up from his desk chair as Bucky enters the room because, as Sam likes to say, his mama raised him right. She still lives in Harlem, as far as Bucky knows. Another New Yorker. If any more moved in, they’d have start calling this part of Detroit Little Manhattan.

“How many times’ve I heard that before?” Bucky laughs, but it’s hollow. Sam catches on right away.

“Talk to me, dude. How you been?”

“Fine.”

“That how it gonna be today?”

Bucky rubs his face. He’s still not good at this.

“Just the grind, you know. Nothing special this week.”

“This week’s Valentine’s Day. You got any plans?” Sam asks, trying to direct Bucky in a new direction. Bucky appeases him, sort of.

“Steve and I will probably get Thai, I guess.”

If Sam’s frustrated with his answers, he doesn’t show it. “That’ll be fun. How’re things going with that? You two got a label?”

“I told him I love him,” Bucky blurts, suddenly finding his shoes  _ very  _ interesting.

“Okay!” Sam says excitedly, the whites of his eyes glowing in the semi-darkness of the basement. “Okay, that’s something. Steve say it back?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, unable to stop himself from smiling. “Yeah, he did.”

“Happy for you, man.” As he says it, Bucky knows Sam’s speaking not just as his therapist, but as his friend. There’s an agreement in place – nothing said in the basement leaves the basement, house rules – but Bucky has a feeling Sam’ll be prying the story out of Steve soon enough. And Steve, with his big ol’ mouth, is gonna be damn eager to tell it.

“Thanks.”

“You ever said it before?”

Bucky shakes his head.

“How do you feel about it?”

“Good. Really, really good.”

“How ‘bout the meds? They holdin’ up? Feeling okay?” Sam’s eyes are carefully neutral, and Bucky tries to match them, even though he’s not a fan of the new direction. Bucky breathes hard out of his nose – an almost-laugh.

“Steve makes me take ‘em,” Bucky finally says, since Sam is waiting for words and not just bodily noises. 

“Makes you?” Oh, Sam does  _ not  _ like that very much. Bucky backtracks.

“Oh,  _ Jeez,  _ he doesn’t shove ‘em down my throat or hide ‘em in peanut butter, Sam. He just reminds me every morning, got one of those old-people day-of-the-week pill cases and sets it by my morning coffee.”

Sam raises an eyebrow.

“He’s just taking care of me, Sam. Honest.”

Another beat.

“It’s...it’s  _ sweet _ ,” Bucky insists, but Sam is made out of marble.

“I know it seems sweet,” he finally says. “But you are a grown ass man, and I want to make sure you’re making your own choices. Lots of choices got stolen from you for a damn long time, Barnes. I want you to know that every day you’re here is a conscious choice. You can leave. You can decline your meds. I’m not saying I  _ recommend  _ those things – ‘cause let’s be straight, I  _ don’t  _ recommend those things – but I don’t want you takin’ orders from nobody.”

“Ain’t those orders?” Bucky says, tongue-in-cheek.

“ _ James _ ,” Sam threatens. Bucky squirms at his first name, and it has the effect of making Sam soften. “Look, man. I was military, too. I got real used to following orders – blindly – and Steve, even if he’s my best friend, gives off a ... a...”

“Captain vibe?” Bucky supplies.

“Exactly. And Cap, good man as he is, loves taking care of people. Sometimes too much. You feel me?”

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees. 

“Sorry, sorry. I feel like I’m taking over your session,” Sam admits, leaning back in his chair and pulling from a bottle of water. “Anything you want to talk about, Barnes?”

Bucky pulls at a loose string in the hole of his jeans, thinking of the things he could tell Sam.  _ I can’t get my dick up. I miss Natasha. The nightmares haven’t gone away even though I’m taking the PTSD meds like you said. When I see homeless people, I feel guilty – why did I get out and they didn’t? Also, Steve’s better than me in every way, and I’m terrified of the day he realizes it. _

“Nah,” Bucky exhales instead.

 

\---

 

The next time it happens, they’re both prepared for it.

“No go?” Steve asks nonchalantly. Bucky feels anything but nonchalant. They’ve been grinding on one another for the last half hour, in Bucky’s room this time, and Bucky’s still got nothing to show for it. Bucky can tell that Steve’s watching his tone and keeping his face neutral. It’s frustrating. The last two times they’d fooled around, Bucky’d been  _ fine.  _ The second time, he held the erection long enough to actually orgasm all over Steve’s chest (and lick it off, but, well, details). More and more, it just feels like a crapshoot. 

Bucky sighs, reaches down with metal fingers to grab his flaccid cock. They’re cold, which he hopes might send some feeling into it, but it’s useless. “No go for me. But I can still help you out, Stevie,” he practically purrs, trying to sustain the mood. Jeez. Can’t a guy who’s been through as much as he has blow his load in the man that he loves? Is that too much to ask?

“I’m okay, really, Buck,” Steve says, getting up from the puce sheets (it’s really a wonder they both fit in Bucky’s twin). Something heavy sinks down and plants itself in Bucky’s heart. Steve kisses his forehead. “Don’t worry about it, okay?” Bucky watches as Steve stands in all his naked glory, his bare ass canting back and forth, and wraps one of Bucky’s towels around his surprisingly small waist. Going to jerk off in the shower, probably. He rests his hand on Bucky’s shoulder for a second before he leaves.

It’s not enough.

 

In the morning, Bucky scarfs down his eggs and doesn’t say a word to anyone. Sam leaves in the van, ready to drop Luke and Wade at the mall and Scott somewhere on the East side to take a look at some family’s plumbing. Banner’s still asleep, and if he listens hard enough, he can hear Vision and Wanda having morning sex two doors down from his. Steve’s still upstairs, running late. 

Bucky glares at the little day-of-the-week carton – rainbow-colored, Steve thought he was being clever – of capsules. “Mood stabilizers.” The fuck was a mood stabilizer, anyway? A healthy sex life was a  _ mood stabilizer.  _ Not relying on food stamps was a  _ mood stabilizer.  _ Not getting your arm blown off fighting for a country that never had your back was a  _ mood stabilizer.  _ What the hell could a tiny blue-and-white capsule do for his mood that a good fuck punctuated by a cigarette and some post-coital cuddling couldn’t?

Bucky looks at his watch. February 13. Tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day. This is temporary. Just for today and tomorrow. Just so he can get a freaking erection on Valentine’s Day and make love to all the curves and brackets of the first man who ever felt like home to him, feel him warm and tight and ready for him. This is something nice he can do for Steve. Then he’ll go straight back to schedule. Mood stabilizers, antidepressants, the whole nine yards. Hell, he’ll meditate if they ask him to. Just not today. Christ, not today.

He isn’t taking himself off his meds. He’s  _ not..  _ He’s just… forgetting them today. And tomorrow. February 15, he’ll pop those bad boys right into his kisser. Happily so. 

The garbage disposal rings out with a shrill whir.

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

“I hear it’s bring-your-boyfriend-to-work day soon,” Wanda drops casually as she and Bucky wash dishes together after Tuesday’s dinner, bumping him with her hip. She had a sneaky way of making sure she and Bucky worked nearly identical chore schedules, not that he minded. If Bucky wasn’t so clearly in love with Steve, though, Vision would’ve probably torn off his other arm by now. There was probably something to be said about  _ codependency _ and  _ healthy relationships _ there, but what did he know? He was flushing pills down the drain and lying to his therapist, so.

“What, you bringin’ Vision to the salon or somethin’? He doesn’t really have much hair… ” Bucky teases instead.

She splashes soapy dishwater at him. “You know what I mean.”

He sighs, his gray T-shirt covered in droplets of water. “Yeah, yeah. I agreed to go with Steve to the hearing. He says he could use some moral support on this case.”

“Steve’s never taken anyone from the house to his work stuff before, you know,” she mentions casually, auburn hair swinging against her back.

“Gee, that makes me feel loads better,” Bucky snarks, working at a glob of dried cheese that won’t come out of the pot. 

“I’m just saying, it seems like he trusts you, Soldier.” Bucky’s dog tags _clink_ as if on cue against the pot as he put a little more elbow grease into it. “You still got that suit I bought you from Salvation Army?”

“Yeah?”

“I’d take it to the dry cleaner’s if I were you,” she says in that ominous way she has; for a second, she reminds him distinctly of Natasha. She doesn’t say anything more. When the dishes are done, she grabs her engagement ring from the shelf above the sink and slips it back onto her finger with an uncharacteristic giggle and a moment of admiration for the little diamond. It might be a pawn shop ring, but it was her ring, and no one could deny that she was damn proud of it.

“Well, thanks, I think,” Bucky finally says as he towels off his own hands, one pruny and one, well, made of unyielding metal that couldn’t rust.

“You’re welcome,” Wanda sing-songs before disappearing upstairs with a lidded wink.

 

\--

 

The next day it appears on the calendar, which makes it official.

 

 _Saturday_ _February 17th. Steve & Bucky. Public Hearing. 11 AM. _

 

Somehow that makes it all more real, no matter how much he likes seeing the little ampersand between their names where it belongs. He stares at it for so long that he almost forgets to look three boxes left, where little pink hearts denote that today is, in fact, Valentine’s Day. 

Valentine’s Day goes predictably. Wade “decorated” by leaving pink dildos hidden all over the house (the one  _ in  _ the cereal box was a little much, though). Bucky holds Steve’s hand all the way to work, and it only takes about three songs for Bucky to realize they aren’t listening to the radio – this was Steve’s mix, all gushy oldies that made Bucky’s stomach flip-flop. 

“You absolute sap!” Bucky accuses, laughing to keep himself from crying. 

“Happy Valentine’s Day, punk,” Steve mumbles around a kiss, taking his eyes off the road.

“We’re on the highway!” Bucky argues. He kisses him anyway. He’s done more dangerous things.

“Well, I’m in love!” Steve beams. He yells at the next car over, though his window is still rolled up, “You hear that? I’m in love!” 

“Stop,” Bucky laughs, tossing his head back. Sometimes, loving Steve is real easy.

That night, loving Steve is  _ not  _ easy. They went out for Thai (c’mon, where else would they fucking go?) and Bucky is  _ ready.  _ There are flowers from the Iranian florists down the street waiting in Steve’s bed. He made a Spotify playlist. He did his morning stretches, drank his coffee, put on the tight red, white, and blue briefs that Steve liked so much. Shaved his beard. Tied up his hair. 

Hell, he even took himself off his medication. There was literally no reason for it  _ not  _ to work, yet there he was, crying on the toilet seat with Steve on the other side of the locked door, still trying to coax Bucky out. Bucky, who was looking up  _ half-lives  _ and  _ side effects  _ and  _ Viagra  _ on his phone through angry tears. They’d been so close. They’d even considered having Steve fuck him instead of the other way around, which wasn’t quite what either of them wanted but they were so  _ close _ , but Bucky just couldn’t direct enough blood to that region, and then Steve didn’t want to orgasm if Bucky couldn’t even though Bucky’d feel a whole lot better if Steve would just let him blow him and call it a  _ day _ , and then they’d started  _ arguing _ and Bucky was  _ trembling– _

“Please, please come out, Buck. It’s Valentine’s Day.”

“It’s a Hallmark holiday to sell diamonds and keep dentists in business.”

“It’s time I still want to spend with you.”

_ Side effects of taking oneself off antidepressants include, but are not limited to…  _

“Go away, Steve.”

The door handle jiggles again. Still locked. Bucky wonders how long Steve will stay out there. He looks at the familiar green tile, the little spots of mold growing in the shower, then back at his phone.

One website says that decreased sex drive is a “less serious” side effect of Prozac.

He googles: how to get an erection.

He googles: how to keep an erection.

He googles: how the fuck do eighty-year-old men father children?

He googles: how to get steve to go away

He googles: how to make myself go away

 

Eventually, even Bucky gets tired of his own bullshit. He rises off the toilet seat, fully clothed, and unlocks the door. He feels a little guilty when he finds 220 lb of sleeping boyfriend curled up outside the bathroom door. More than a little guilty. He wakes him gently with a hand to his wide back, and Steve’s precious when he’s half-asleep, mumbling nonsense as Bucky leads him up the stairs. This time, there is no hesitation; he sleeps next to Steve, where he belongs, even on nights like this.

 

On February 15, Bucky doesn’t go back on his meds. It’s not a conscious decision. He doesn’t think,  _ today I am not going to take my psychiatric medication.  _ He just leaves them in the container. No dramatic flushing, no feeding them to the fern. Or the garbage again. He just ignores them. Whether it’s because he wants to get off or because he doesn’t think they’re helping or because they’ve become the physical manifestation of everything he hates about himself, he couldn’t tell you. All he knows is that he doesn’t pop them down the hatch, and that’s that.

In the two days after Valentine’s Day, Bucky feels himself getting irritable as he starts bracing himself for the hearing on Saturday. He snaps at his co-workers at the garage. It’s not  _ his  _ fault that the cashier chooses today of all days to get himself locked out of the damn register, which he loudly calls a “cocksucker” for all to hear before swinging at the thing with his fist and cursing some more.

The boys at work aren’t too keen on man-on-man action. Most of them are ex-cons or former junkies themselves – they didn’t nickname it  _ Second Chance Coulson’s _ for nothing – and street life doesn’t exactly lend itself to open-mindedness about sexual orientation. Bucky tries not to blame them personally – they didn’t exactly have comprehensive sex ed at Detroit Public Schools these days. Bucky’s known for a long time that his definition of what it means to be a man isn’t the same as everyone’s. He hasn’t told the other mechanics that Steve’s more than his landlord and ride to work, and he doesn’t plan to. He hears ‘faggot’ enough times a day as it is. Still, they could do to get with the times.

It bothers him more today than usual.  _ Cocksucker.  _ Like it’s such a dirty thing. It makes Bucky’s jaw tighten and his fists clench. It’s  _ 2018 _ , dammit. He gives himself a throbbing headache. 

And for fuck’s sake, he doesn’t even  _ get  _ to suck his boyfriend’s dick, because his body and also the universe hate him. And because Steve feels bad if he gets off when Bucky doesn’t, even though it just makes Bucky feel  _ worse.  _ Of course he would hit his longest dry spell ever  _ while in his first serious relationship.  _ Made perfect sense.

Long story short, he’s offended at the word cocksucker and offended that he hasn’t sucked a cock in a  _ while  _ and Christ, he needs a smoke.

Utterly distracted but not having the brains to take a break and cool down when he damn well knows he needs it, Bucky overworks himself, trying to get too much done in too little time, checking his watch like a nervous tic. His right hands starts to tremor, slightly. He ignores it, but it just keeps getting worse. He doesn’t understand; this was a  _ heroin  _ side effect, what the hell is happening to him? He tries to work through the tremors, getting steadily more frustrated, until finally he slices open his hand on the hood of a car and has to have Jeff – the guy under the Honda Civic next to him – take him to the ER for stitches. 

But the sight of blood – that much blood – sends him spiraling. His jaw flexes, and he can feel himself dissociating, and then he  _ can’t  _ feel himself dissociating, which is somehow worse. Sam’s given him all the words to describe his crazy, but he’s gotta say, it’s not doing him much help at the moment.

“Barnes, you a’ight? Breathin’ mighty heavy over there, brother,” Jeff says from behind the wheel. “At least the shop’ll pay for it.” Bucky can’t concentrate on his words, and white knuckles the seatbelt the whole way to the hospital.

_ Blood.  _ Blood like the puddle of his own he laid in for three days in the Afghani desert. Blood filling the space where his arm wasn’t. Blood in his mouth, the taste of nothing but copper and sand, thirsty for anything but the flood of iron. Blood on his hands, his own, needles and  _ so much blood _ , bloodstains on Natasha’s couch, bloody noses, split lips and more blood, coughing it up, seeing it in Steve’s toilet,  _ blood.  _

“Yeah,” Bucky replies like a whisper, pale as a ghost. 

The nurse – Claire something, a sassy Latina with a no-nonsense attitude but a soft touch – patches him up even as he shakes and convulses beneath her steady hands. They have to a call in the doc – Dr. Strange, as it were, which does nothing to comfort Bucky in this state – to hold him down.

Stitches meant needles. Needles... needles mean fire and tailspin, falling. Needles were everything but home, they were the distance between self and air, the pinpricks behind his eyelids and the screams still caught in the back of his  _ throat _ –

He’d blacked out at the hospital. Twice.

Steve takes off work early, which of course Bucky feels terrible about so close to the parole hearing, and picks him up from the ER instead of the shop. Steve has to pull over on the freeway so Bucky can get sick on the side of the road. Bucky’s not able to stop shaking until they get to the house. 

Wanda has to stroke his hair for hours before he could even speak again.

Steve falls asleep in his bed this time, somewhere around three in the morning, with Bucky’s injured hand cradled in both of his, like a golden retriever carrying a baby bird in its mouth.

 

\---

 

The parole board hearing is tomorrow. 

_ Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. _

Bucky’s not so sure what Little Orphan Annie was on about – he’s dreading tomorrow and hopes the sun doesn’t come up for the next seventy years or so. He saunters upstairs to Steve’s room, hoping for a little back massage or at least a few soothing words, but Steve is buried in paperwork, pressing a pencil onto the buttons of a calculator and jotting things hurriedly onto a legal pad. He doesn’t notice Bucky peering in through the crack in the door, so Bucky says nothing and slips away, careful not to bother Steve while he works.

Defeated, Bucky makes his way dramatically downstairs with his hands shoved in his pockets and his chin tucked to his chest. It’s getting late, but there’s no way he’s about to fall asleep, jittery as he’s feeling, so he plucks a DVD from the shelf Dr. Banner put together, feeling judged by Sam’s Black History Month picture of Langston Hughes, and starts the TV. In retrospect, watching  _ Up  _ was probably  _ not  _ the move before the hearing, because now he’s folded onto the couch like origami and cradling his sliced hand anxiously, a tear spilling over his cheek and into his five o’clock shadow. 

A half hour later, Loki joins him. He’s just about the only person who can slip around the house more quietly than Bucky, the sneaky bastard. Looking for any kind of distraction, Bucky starts up a conversation.

“Hey,” he tries.

“Greetings, Barnes,” Loki says formally. Always so formal, that guy. Bucky can’t get a read on him, just a general air of mischief from the tightness of his eyes and the up-to-no-good not-smile on his white lips.

“So, I uh, got a question. Lots of people around here got street names, ‘Hulk’ and ‘Hawkeye,’ but I feel like I know almost everyone’s real names except yours and your brother’s,” Bucky tries, turning away from the credits on screen and looking over at Loki. He feels shifty and longs for a time when small talk rolled out of him in waves and he charmed everyone he met. A different era.

“My real name  _ is  _ Loki,” he sneers, seeming somehow to get even paler beneath his oily black hair. His eyes narrow in an unfriendly way. For a second, Bucky thinks he knows what Harry Potter experienced looking up the bridge of Snape’s nose all those years. “Asshole,” Loki tacks on as an afterthought.

“Shit, sorry, sorry. I just thought, you know, Loki and Thor, Norse  _ gods _ –”

“Our mom believed in homeopathic healing and studied world religions. Then she hooked up with a guy in a hot spring in Iceland while she was on a lot of psychedelics. Any more questions?” 

“N-nope, got it,” Bucky stutters, fully intimidated by Loki despite his slim frame. If the dude wasn’t so damn  _ creepy,  _ Bucky would’ve thought the scenario was hilarious. As it was, he wishes he’d asked Loki’s friendlier and more light-hearted older brother about it instead. Sheesh. Bucky disappears into his bedroom, and after a pause, opts to lock the door. Just in case.

_ Tomorrow, tomorrow. _

 

\--

 

He wakes up groggily Saturday morning, still half-dreaming, and clicks the home button on the iPhone on his pillow.

_ February 17, 2018. _

Jesus fucking Christ.

  
  



	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little extra warning here for themes of mass incarceration (it's the parole board hearing, based on a transcript of a real Parole Board meeting for an inmate in Michigan), and the ending might be tender for those with experience with STIs, drug abuse, and stereotypes.

The room is stuffy and Bucky fingers his collar. Steve managed to get him into a monkey suit, which is no small feat, and he’s sort of glad he got it to the dry cleaners on Seven Mile on Wanda’s suggestion, even if he’ll never tell her.

The Parole Board’s public hearing takes place in the actual prison, Macomb Correctional Facility, but the inside of the room gives the illusion of a high school gym. Bucky can almost forget that they’re on prison premises if his arm would stop vibrating; it didn’t get along so well with the metal detectors on the way in. Admittedly, the rest of him is shaking, too. He pulls his hair back into a neat bun to try to get some air on his neck. Then he takes it out. Puts it back up. Takes it down again. He can feel the guard’s gaze on him. He reminds himself that he’s been clean since June. He’s not in trouble. According to Sam’s pamphlets, there shouldn’t be a drop of heroin in his system. Unfortunately, his blood pressure doesn’t seem to agree. Christ almighty. The things this blonde idiot can get him to do.

Steve keeps his hand on the small of Bucky’s back as they walk in, and it helps. It also feels pretty gay, so part of Bucky wants him to stop, to avoid the attention, but he wants the comfort more than he wants to avoid the slurs. Not that they’ll hear any here. The room is stoic, as it should be, with everyone murmuring and keeping to themselves. “Everyone” is a strong word, anyway. For a public hearing, Bucky is disgruntled by the absence of people. There’s a large man with longish blonde hair in a gray suit in the back, and a young blonde woman with stick-straight hair in a pencil skirt she keeps readjusting.  There’s the Latina nurse he recognizes from his little hospital excursion, and the cut on his hand throbs suddenly at the memory. Claire, her name was. She’s still in her scrubs, probably straight off the night shift judging by the exhaustion in her eyes. 

There are a couple of attorneys, though Steve’s informed him they’re not allowed to speak, and a large black man covered in tattoos who Steve informs Bucky was the blind prisoner’s old cell mate. Then there’s him and Steve, and well, that’s about it. A small gathering for the determination of a man’s fate. It makes Bucky feel simultaneously small and like he’s at the center of the universe. He turns his attention on something happier – Steve.

Steve is looking particularly dapper this early Saturday morning. Bucky hasn’t ever seen Steve in a suit before – Clint usually takes him to work on his motorcycle on the days that Steve takes care of more official business – and it appears that Bucky has been missing out. If the rotation of too-small T-shirts hugging Steve’s broad shoulders and mounted pecs was cruel, the tailored suit with the American flag pin on his lapel paired with striped socks and patent leather shoes is downright unfair. He wishes he could get a better look, or at the very least loosen Rogers’ tie, but he’s doing everything in his power just to keep breathing steady. 

Besides, he thought bitterly, what was the point of getting Rogers out of all those clothes if he couldn’t  _ do  _ anything about it?

Just then the double doors at the back of the gym open, and two boxy security officers bring the prisoner in, orange jumpsuit and all, as he and Steve take their seats quietly in the back. The auditorium’s set up with rows of metal folding chairs – nothing fancy – but Bucky’s surprised. He thought there’d be something more… formal about this. For all his past mistakes, Bucky’s never been to trial, and there seems to be something almost anticlimactic about it. Nonchalant. Like they do this every week.

The thought makes him twitchy all over again. 

And this prison is one of, like,  _ thirty.  _ In Michigan alone.  _ Christ.  _ Breathe, Barnes.

Steve’s got a yellow legal pad in his lap and chews his pen. Bucky unbuttons the top button of his pastel pink Salvation Army dress shirt, trying to get some air.

Papers shuffle. Somebody coughs.

“Alright, let’s get started,” the Assistant Attorney General says, beginning the meeting. The setup is intimidating, with the three-person Parole Board panel spread across the one long table at the front like the world’s most somber wedding party. They’ve dressed all in black, as if for a funeral rather than a hearing. Perhaps, Bucky thinks morbidly, they’re often the same thing. 

The prisoner – Matthew M. Murdock, #813664, they read – sits across from the panel, painfully alone in his own metal folding chair. He’s  _ handcuffed _ , Bucky realizes sickly. He swallows back bile. Steve gives him a concerned look, conversing with his eyes, but Bucky shakes his head and nods back to the front of the room. To Matt. Bucky itches to sit beside him, just to split the oppressing stares of the board members. Perhaps it’s to Matt’s advantage that he can’t see their piercing, vulture-like gazes.

Formalities and introductions take place. As each member of the Board introduces themselves, Bucky wonders what it takes for a person to get appointed to decide people’s fates like this. Why these three people? They ever seen struggle? Ever not known where their next meal was coming from? Ever served time? Tried a drug? Been strip-searched by the police? Bucky’s not too religious, but he’s pretty sure God’s the only one allowed to judge.

Steve takes frantic notes.

“We’ll begin with the hearing, shall we? My first question is always the same, but of course you know that. What is this, your second time before us?” The Assistant Attorney General snickers. Bucky wants to put his metal fingers around the guy’s throat, and by the tautness of Steve’s jaw, he’s guessing Rogers would do the same. “The question is: Why do you think you should get parole, Mr. Murdock?”

Matthew adjusts his red-tinted glasses and fingers his cane with his right hand. Bucky ogles the handcuffs again.

“I’m a changed man, sir.”

They walk through the hearing together like a finely tuned dance. The AAG asks all the questions, with the Board Members jumping in to ask for clarification or comment. The AAG tries to trip Murdock up multiple times, demanding exact dates and times from incidents years ago, confusing amounts of money and timelines.  _ How could anyone remember all these details? _ But Murdock came prepared. He recites every parking ticket and misdemeanor he’s ever had with ease (though Bucky wonders at how those could possibly be relevant). He recalls his sentences, the judge’s names, the victim’s names. He’s witty but respectful, knowledgeable but never oversteps his turn. A dance, indeed.

“My pop was shot in front of me in ‘99. Gang violence, of course. He’d been a boxer – always wanted more for me, wanted me to use my head instead of my fists. But, no pun intended, I was so... blinded by anger. I had a lot of anger in me as a young man. I mean, those guys took my father away from me. It made me violent. The nuns at the orphanage did their best, but I– I made terrible choices, made family on the streets since mine was taken from me so young.

“I’ve worked hard to address that pent up anger. I’ve forgiven the man who killed my father. Literally – I found him when they transferred me to Cotton Correctional for a couple months a few years ago, and I sat down with him in the chow hall and had a word. I’m sure that guy was a man of pain, of struggle. He was human. The Lord Our Father created him, and judgement is up for Him alone. I don’t hate him. I don’t hate, anymore. I know that compassion and nonviolence are the answer.

“I took advantage of programming here at Cotton, got my Bachelor’s and JD in the process, all while behind bars. I actually teach the anger management classes now. The guys here say I help them cool off, which is all I can really hope for. It’s been powerful to watch them grow. I really believe in second chances.

“How’ve I changed? Well, I was jumped in my cell by my bunkmate, #394242, about two years ago. I don’t know what made him do it, but I faced his violence with peace. I haven’t lifted my fists since September 19, 2004, sir. The day I got arrested. I’m finally making my dad proud.”

The room is teary-eyed. Murdock is impressive. Steve’s prepped him incredibly well; he’s articulate and clean-cut, handsome and genuine. Not that someone should have to be any of those things to have a fair shot at freedom, but he’s playing their game, and he’s playing it well. He’s got a rumble of sincerity in his gravelly voice. He’s a man of God, which matters in these parts, and full to the brim with forgiveness. Bucky’s ready to acquit him then and there. Or give him Parole. However the fuck it works. 

After an hour of (mostly) tactful back-and-forth, Murdock recounting his past and imploring that he’s a new man ready for the free world, the Board opens up the floor for public comment. 

“Would anyone like to speak against?” the AAG says, looking particularly greasy beneath his balding comb-over.

Bucky peers around. Nobody moves. Thank God.

“How about for?”

“I would,” comes a female voice.

It’s the young woman with stick-straight blonde hair. She walks with uneasiness that reveals her lack of practice in high heels to the podium. She brushes a lock of hair behind her ear and clears her throat.

“Matthew saved my life,” she says clearly and deliberately. “Er, sorry. I’m Karen. Karen Page. And, look, I know, I know he did a terrible thing. And I know his job today is to show you that he has respect for human life. And he was too humble to say it today, so I’ll say it on his behalf.

“I used to live in Matt’s building, we would sometimes go for drinks at Josie’s, this old dump in Cass Corridor, talk about our dreams and stupid stuff that young people talk about. I wanted to be a journalist. He wanted to be a lawyer.” She laughs a little. Bucky remembers to exhale. “We were practically kids at the time. But um, there was one night that we went out, and we didn’t have very much to drink because it was a Sunday night, and this, um, guy, starts following us home. Matt noticed first – he’s got great hearing – and when I looked over my shoulder, it was my ex.

“My ex-boyfriend was, well, emotionally abusive. He would threaten to kill himself if I left him, that kind of thing,” she swallows, and Bucky notices the prisoner –  _ Matthew  _ – give an almost imperceptible nod, encouraging her. Supporting her even as he was handcuffed to his chair. “I was scared to go back to my apartment. We started walking faster. And that’s when my ex started screaming at us from behind. He – he thought Matt and I were a couple, which we weren’t, but he started yelling anyway. He ran up behind us and before we even realized what was happening, he shoved his hand down my sk-skirt.”

She takes a breath. Even the AAG doesn’t interrupt her.

“Matt was my hero. He knew self defense and was able to pull him off of me and– and disarm him, we didn’t even know he had a gun until it clattered to the ground without going off, thankfully. We called the police. Matt exhibited self-restraint. He didn’t hurt my ex, or attack him. He was so calm, and he held me while I cried there on the sidewalk as we waited for the cops to come.

“And that night, after we’d given our statements and finally made it back to our building at two in the morning, he walked me to my room and – and of course, I was still scared, so he told me he’d wait outside for the night. When I got up, the next morning, you know, to go to work, I opened my apartment door and he’d – well, he’d slept outside the whole night, keeping watch.

“Matt’s not perfect. I mean, none of us are, but him especially. He lets the milk go bad. He’s intense and feels everything very strongly. He did all the things you guys have harped on for the last hour. But there’s another Matt in there that deserves a second chance. He’s super bright, and I’m sure if he gets out he’ll take the Bar and finally become a lawyer like he said. He cares about people. He knows the difference between right and wrong. He’s just... he’s my friend.” Her mouth twitches. “Thank you.”

“Does the prisoner have a representative?”

That’s when Steve stands up. Bucky freezes; he wasn’t expecting Steve to speak for some reason, though in retrospect he really should’ve seen it coming. For one, Steve can never keep his big mouth shut; but also, if there’s anyone whose going to stand up for justice at any chance he gets, it’s Steve Rogers. If Steve hates bullies as much as he says he does, Bucky’s not sure he’s ready to see him give the Assistant Attorney General a piece of his mind.

Bucky goes cold as the warm weight of Steve’s thigh pressed against his disappears. He readjusts in his seat, and Steve takes the podium.

“Good morning, er, well, afternoon, everyone,” Steve starts. Bucky prays to a God he doesn’t believe in. Steve continues, “This is not a tough call. Prisoner of the State Matthew Michael Murdock is currently serving not one, not two, but  _ three _ life sentences. That, folks, is evidence of a broken system, not only because it’s impossible for one person to serve three life sentences, but also because he never assaulted anyone. The fighting in the ring was consensual, if illegal. He never attacked the man who shot his father before his own eyes. No, he gambled. All of his crimes are  _ nonviolent.  _ He set up an underground boxing ring. He’s a classic case of the lost young man who messed up because he thought being tough was the only path to manhood.

“I’ve been working with Matt for a while now. I’m with the American Friends Service Committee, a nonprofit that works on things like peace and justice. Matt and I, we talk about what it means to be a man. He’s grown so much in the last three years. He went from taking anger management programming to teaching it. He put himself through law school while in prison, and now he works in Macomb’s law library and gives counsel to other prisoners, helping them make sense of their sentences and the law. I urge you to see that Matt’s done with the hatred in his past. He’s not moving back to Hell’s Kitchen; we’ve talked, and I’ve offered him a place at my halfway house in Delray. We’re ready to help him get back on his feet. He’s a good, God-fearing man, ladies and gentlemen. One of the most introspective men I’ve ever met. Give him a second chance. Please.”

Steve retakes his seat, flipping the legal pad back to the first page and staring straight ahead. Bucky rests a hand on his knee, which is bobbing anxiously.

“Alright, Captain America,” Bucky whispers. Steve gives him a little shove, but he’s smiling. That’s a good sign. Steve must think it’s going well. 

 

“What do you  _ mean  _ they don’t decide today?” Bucky spits, surprising himself with the passion boiling in his veins as they shuffle through the parking lot outside the prison. He’s never been one to get bent out of shape over social justice issues, but this? This just wasn’t fucking fair. “Murdock is clearly a great candidate for parole, but the state just gonna lock people up with big red ‘CRIMINAL’ stamps on their foreheads?  _ Forever?  _ Don’t they recognize that this would save  _ them _ money? It just doesn’t make  _ sense _ .” Bucky has to consciously think about not hitting anything.

Steve looks at him reasonably in the prison parking lot, a little not-smile pulling up the right corner of his mouth, like a parent telling his son that the tooth fairy ain’t real. “I know, Buck. I know. It’s rigged.” He nods sympathetically and puts a big hand on Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky shakes but bites down whatever emotions are making him tremble. Fuck, wasn’t he supposed to be the one supporting  _ Steve _ today? But here he is, a wreck, per usual.

“Hey,” Steve says, facing him fully. He tucks a lock of Bucky’s dark brown hair behind his ear. “Hey,” and to that Bucky finally looks up to meet Steve’s eyes, baby blue and closer than he expected. “We didn’t lose. This is how the board works. He could very well be released. I really think he’s got a chance.”

Foregoing whatever facade of having-it-together he may have had, Bucky leans into Steve’s shoulder and melts.

 

On the ride home, when both their eyes are dry again, Steve turns to Bucky with a cheeky grin, amused.

“So, Captain America, you say?” His right cheek dimples, and Bucky rolls his eyes, regretting everything he’s ever said ever. He’s not even willing to entertain this fucking goofball; he closes his eyes and turns the music up. Steve’s corresponding laughter makes Bucky’s own mouth turn up in a smile, but he keeps his eyes closed, utterly exhausted. And it’s only one in the afternoon.

 

At their usual Thai place, they find a private booth with peeling vinyl and sit across from each other, ordering the same dishes as always and nodding to the Vietnamese waitstaff like old friends. Bucky buries himself in the noodles and tofu and peanut sauce, surprising himself with how hungry he is. He can already hear the chagrin in Steve’s rehearsed spiel;  _ “You gotta stop thinkin’ cigarettes and coffee count as a meal, Buck.”  _ The man’s a broken record, and defending the coffee-cigarette combo is a hill Bucky’s willing to die on. Besides, Dr. Gupta says his weight is fine, and  _ she  _ went to medical school, so Rogers can suck it. 

When his stomach starts expanding into his waistband, Bucky finally has the wherewithal to look up at Steve and remember that he’s got company. Rogers’s eating slow, taking his time. That’s something Bucky loves about him; Steve never acts like he’s running out of time. 

“Thanks,” Bucky says finally, considering the man across from him. His tidy crew cut and big nose, biceps so enormous they look like something out of a comic book, the jaw that always gives away how stressed he is. 

Bucky wants to leave  _ marks  _ along that jawline. Damn.

“For what?” Steve says, genuinely confused as he drains his water glass and effectively pulls Bucky out of his short-lived reverie. 

“Taking me with you. Showing me another slice of your life,” Bucky says, feeling sappy in a way that only Steve can make him. Their legs knock under the booth.

“I’m glad you could see it. Today was a good one to come to. Matt was exceptional; I really have a good feeling about his case,” Steve says brightly.

 

____

  
  


They’re necking in Bucky’s room the following Sunday afternoon. Steve’s still high off what he has deemed an inevitable victory for the AFSC (damn Quaker) and Bucky is most happy when Steve’s happy.

Bucky’d been too anxious for anything yesterday – he’d spent hours lying on Steve’s bedroom floor, the two of them tossing a baseball back and forth like they were in the seventh grade, while Bucky asked question after question.  _ How does sentencing work?  _ and  _ What’s a misconduct ticket?  _ and  _ Did you know that Karen chick was gonna talk?  _ and  _ She was kind of cute? No? Still gold-star gay, alright.  _ Steve had entertained his questions as long as humanly possible, but even Cap’s eyelids get heavy. Once Steve was out, Bucky’d snuck out of his room, on the hunt for something high in calories and drenched in cheese. He and Clint made a late-night Taco Bell run, and Clint mercifully let Bucky recount the entire hearing. Twice. 

But now that it’s Sunday, and therapy is already behind him, Bucky’s rather amused to discover how turned-on Steve is by the idea of rough sex on the Lord’s Day (deep down he dog-ears the euphoria as probable internalized homophobia and sighs, thinking already that his next therapy session with Sam can’t come soon enough). Steve manages to wedge himself on top of Bucky, who is still in his boxer shorts, pressing against him in ways that are entirely unfair and leave Bucky panting. When Steve slips his thigh between Bucky’s, the sound that rips out of him is absolutely  _ feral.  _

Bucky thrusts against him with calculated fervor, not trying to expose how eager he is but steadily losing track of the part of his brain that wants him to slow down. He’s got fistfuls of Steve’s T-shirt in both hands and wraps his legs all the way around him, bringing Steve down closer and harder against him.

“Somebody had their Wheaties this morning,” Steve says fondly, looking up at Bucky from underneath long lashes that take Bucky’s breath away. Well, that, and the fact that Steve just traced the length of Bucky’s cock with his middle finger, and the damn thing might actually be  _ working.  _ Bucky thinks briefly of the small pile of pills he’d flushed this week,  _ this morning,  _ but as he arcs up into Steve’s touch involuntarily, the only words his addled brain can form are  _ worth it. _

Clothes-not-necessary activities with Steve feel so fucking good. Firsts for Steve, and sensational to Bucky, who’s been numb for so long it might as well be his first time, too. Unlike usual, his libido is having a fucking  _ heyday  _ and if Steve doesn’t take him in his mouth soon, he might scream.

It had started simply enough. Bucky’d been reading in his room,  _ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,  _ which Wanda got (read: stole) from the library for him for Hanukkah (she said she’d pay his overdue library book debt someday when she was a millionaire, which made him laugh), when Steve’d slipped into his room, already flushed and nervous.

“You at a good stoppin’ place?” Steve had asked with a nod toward the book in Bucky’s lap, arms behind his back. 

And then they were on top of each other.

Grinding out their passions on the old twin and the puce sheets, Steve’s hands clench fists of fabric at either of Bucky’s shoulders and Bucky’s sweatpants have migrated down around his ankles. They were starting to get somewhere, what with Steve licking a tender stripe down Bucky’s neck to his collarbone, the arcs of their hips still slow and rolling, Steve following Bucky’s pelvis wherever it goes as Bucky takes the lead from beneath him. Little gasps escape Steve’s mouth every time Bucky changes the rhythm or surprises him with a little more force, and the little gasps turn to moans and flood Bucky with want. It’s getting too heated for kissing, and Bucky’s hair is falling in his face, but Bucky loves the sloppiness of it, the insatiable need to be closer. Steve grabs Bucky’s flesh hand in one of his and pins it above Bucky’s head, and Bucky practically vibrates with pleasure. There’s a little electric shock at the base of his neck.

“ _ Buck _ ,” Steve whines breathlessly. He’s fingering the elastic of Bucky’s briefs as Bucky’s cock stretches toward Steve’s hand.

He’s just starting to feel the pangs of blood rushing south – fucking  _ finally _ , he might even keep it up this time if Steve can hold out just a little longer – when the tip of Steve’s cock surprises him by nuzzling into the depression of Bucky’s underwear where his hole waits, warm and open, his legs spread apart and welcoming Steve home. It’s the first time  _ those  _ parts of them have been in contact, and it makes Bucky snap his eyes open. His own chub is lengthening his cock against his tensed abdominal muscles, his hips rising off the bed unconsciously to feel Steve where it tingles. Steve’s body jerks for a second and then pauses, his straining cock just resting there, pressing only incrementally, teasingly, into where Bucky wants him most, and they both freeze. There is a moment of self-awareness, of realization, of  _ are we doing this?  _ Bucky can feel Steve’s back muscles moving under his hand, though his hips remain in place.

The moment lasts a second too long, then two. Bucky scans Steve’s face, confused at the long pause, to find that Steve is frozen above him, flushed but with his own baby blues wide open, a look of uncertainty rather than lust on his face, like he was doing long division instead of getting pre-come on Bucky’s boxer shorts.

“What’s goin’ on?” Bucky says gently, looking up from where he’s pressed into the pillows, Steve hovering with the veins of his biceps on display. Bucky’s got his metal hand on Steve, the other still pinned down above his head by Steve’s hand. Slowly, he retracts them, sliding his hand out from under Steve and folding them on his own bare chest, metal and flesh interlaced but both warm from Steve’s radiating heat. Even with his briefs on, he feels suddenly naked. He makes no moves to bring Steve closer or pull him down so their bodies are flush. He knows Steve is new at this, perfectly okay to take it slow until Steve’s ready to give him an emphatic  **yes** . If Steve needs to process, Bucky’ll wait all day. When they’d talked about it, they’d both expected Bucky to top – this was new, maybe weird for Steve with only a thin layer of fabric between the slippery head of his penis and Bucky’s opening. Still, Bucky has absolutely zero complaints about feeling the pulse of Steve’s hard-on where he’s wide and tender, no sir. Steve can take all the time he needs.

“I–” Steve starts, clearly lost for words, his erection still lingering almost humorously between Bucky’s legs. And just like that, the passion has been sucked out of the room. Steve peels himself off slowly, erection bouncing up, and walks himself backwards on his hands to sit back. It leaves Bucky exposed, laying back on the bed with his legs spread apart; the vulnerability makes him squirm and his erection go limp. Fucking brilliant – well, it didn’t seem Steve was up for it anyway, but Christ what a waste. All those pills down the garbage disposal for nothing. As if to protect himself, Bucky sits up, eye level with Steve and flaccid dick at least a little more hidden in his underwear. He aches to itch it, to readjust, but it doesn’t seem the time. He looks at Steve.

Ugh. Relationships are awkward. He gets that electric-shock feeling in the back of his neck again.

“What is it?” Bucky says now, more urgently, trying desperately to tuck away the hurt that his voice betrays. He can feel the furrow develop between his eyebrows, wants to reach out and press his thumb into the matching ‘v’ between Steve’s, but he holds himself back – it wouldn’t be right to touch Steve now. Narcotics Anonymous is very clear about consent. The ball is completely and totally in Steve’s court.

“I… want… ” Steve breathes hard out of his nose and his jaw tightens, like he doesn’t want to say what he’s about to say. “I  _ want  _ to be inside you,” Steve struggles to say, his words doubtful in a way that makes it seem like he very much does  _ not _ want to be inside Bucky. Like maybe he’s trying to convince himself that he does.

“O-kay… ” Bucky says slow-like, not understanding the conflict going on between Steve’s ears but trying desperately to be compassionate. It comes out almost like a question, like he’s waiting for more explanation. This is  _ Steve _ . He wants this, them, to work, desperately. When Steve doesn’t elaborate, Bucky tries humiliatingly, “That’s, uh, that’s kind of what I wanted too, Steve.” 

“I, yeah, but I– Bucky, I don’t want to say this. You gotta know that I don’t want to say this, and I don’t mean anything by it. Truly, I don’t. You trust me?” Steve’s eyes are so pleading, and he’s talking in the rapid-fire way that Stark does. Neither is a good sign.

“‘Course I trust you, stupid.” Bucky gestures at the room, hoping that the fact that they’re half-naked in bed together indicates some fucking trust on his part. He trusted Steve all those months ago when Natasha abandoned him in Detroit, Michigan, and he hasn’t stopped since.

“I...need...I just, I have to ask...” Steve takes a deep breath, rubs his face with both hands, and Bucky leans in to catch what Steve muffles into his own palms, “...if you’ve been, er… tested. For STIs.” Steve pulls his hands away from his face, cheeks reddening deeper than Bucky’s ever seen them go. He’s looking down at his lap and won’t meet Bucky’s eyes.

Bucky’s stomach free-falls at the same time his heart sinks, and he wonders for a fleeting second if it’s possible for all your organs to fall apart at the same time. 

Oh.

_ Oh. _

He gets it. He’s been a fucking vector for disease since he came back from the war; maybe before it, too, come to think of it. The needles he remembers pushing into his skin and good Lord, the needles he doesn’t remember pushing into his skin. None of them sterilized. None of them coming out of clean plastic packaging. Then sex, all kinds of it, with every shape and size and color of the rainbow for fuck’s sake, almost never protected because why the fuck would he spend money protecting himself from STDs when he could get smack instead. You didn’t pull out a Trojan behind the dumpster near the river; you took it raw with a stranger’s grimy fingernails on your waist and thanked ‘em for it after. Probably bummed a smoke off ‘em, too.

Bucky’s whole face falls.

Steve bites his lip and looks at Bucky the same way he looks at Dodge when he takes him to the vet.

And the worst part of it is, well, Bucky  _ hasn’t _ been tested for STDs. Dr. Gupta must’ve done blood work, considering she and her team were up to their elbows in his AB positive last October, but she never said anything about it. No news was good news, right? She would have told him if she found anything, wouldn’t she?

He honestly has no idea.

His sex life had never seemed relevant to the operation or the prosthetic. It hadn’t even been on his radar; she certainly hadn’t asked. And it wasn’t like he thought to volunteer the information –  _ oh yeah, by the way Dr. Gupta, I can’t recount my number of sexual partners but the number’s gotta be pretty fucking high.  _ Pardon him, but he was  _ kind of _ recovering from heroin addiction and a little distracted at the time, thank you very much.

But flashes of Brooklyn come to mind. Eating out a girl on coke in the back of her Mercedes. Fucking the brains out of a fifty-five year man behind the old liquor store for a cool hundred. Lingering outside of an alley in heeled combat boots and eyeliner for crying out loud, hair done up in a mohawk and cigarette dangling from rouged lips, hoping someone would come along to find out he was wearing fishnets under his cargo pants and pay him well for his trouble.

There are flashes of something else, too, beneath the surface. His face smashing against a brick wall. Being yelled at with sour breath. Bucky can’t place the memories, but he shivers reflexively as they mix in with the others.

But at the same time, Bucky isn’t sick. He showers every day, washes carefully around all his tender parts. There’s no… no pus, no warts, or any of the other horrible terrible monstrosities that teenagers look up in computer labs when the teachers aren’t looking. He doesn’t have an STD. He  _ can’t _ . Not when things were this good. Not when everything was finally starting to go his way. Hell, he’s healthy. He’s strong. Wanda’s got him eating vegetables for Christ’s sake. This was a fucking  _ stigma,  _ and it wasn’t  _ fair.  _ Steve of all people should know better. Steve of all people should know that not all addicts have AIDS for God’s sake.

In real time, only seconds have passed. A century stretches between them.

“C’mon, Buck, say something,” Steve breathes, his knees still bracketing Bucky’s thighs on either side. Bucky collects himself.

“Okay,” he whispers, amazed he can even get that word out. It’s not an answer to Steve’s question, and he knows it, but it’s about all he can manage right now. How dare Steve choose now of all times to remind Bucky what a goddamn piece of human  _ shit _ he is? How dare he get Bucky all riled up only to ambush him like this? God, Bucky feels small, and it’s got nothing to do with his erectile dysfunction. 

Bucky gets up from the bed, slow and num, pulls the pair of sweatpants up to his waist, and throws on the nearest T-shirt, his or Steve’s it doesn’t matter, slipping on a pair of shoes – slippers, the only ones he can put on quick enough to get _out_ of this bedroom. He can’t breathe in here. And he sure as hell can’t look Steve in the eye.

Steve tries to talk him down. “Buck, aw, Bucky I didn’t… I didn’t mean to, I wanted… I want… Bucky, this doesn’t change anything for me. I don’t view you any which way except that I want to keep kissing you, shit, Bucky, it’s just a… Buck,  _ Buck, _ where are you goin’?”

Bucky silences him with a searing, pained look.

“I get it, Steve,” he mutters, and leaves the room with Steve sitting undressed and empty-handed in the still-warm tangle of sheets.  _ I wouldn’t have sex with me, either,  _ he doesn’t say.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A wise sage once said: "You don't go to Denny's. You end up at Denny's."
> 
> It was probably Clint. And he was 100% right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't really know how to tag this chapter. Bucky is hurting. He's not a reliable narrator. Take care. This one's a toughie.

After the little stunt in the bedroom, Bucky just goes. He walks out the front door without so much as a wave to the residents lounging in the kitchen and hollering for his attention. The door slams behind him as he stalks off, unsure where he’s going but damn sure that he’s not stopping. Maybe ever. It’s lucky he remembers his coat.

He’s a dramatic son-of-a-bitch, alright?

For a long, aimless stretch of sidewalk, his mind races with anger. He dreams up all kinds of terrible names for Steve, words he certainly wouldn’t have uttered in front of his mother ( _ not that she’d hear them, but, whatever, fuck, that isn’t the point _ ). He decries Steve as heartless and insensitive, a prick willing to stick a knife in anyone and twist it ‘til they bled; a useless fuck who pretends to give a shit about the vermin of the world, luring them into a charade of welcome before pulling the rug out from under them. Steve, who let him get his goddamn hopes up but who sees him as just as sick as every other junkie or ex-con that stumbles pathetically into his life. Another stereotype; another statistic. Steve had looked at him with the one gaze Bucky couldn’t bear to be under: pity. And that’s all he’s ever  _ going _ to be to Steve – a washed-up, half-assed, uneducated heroin user that makes a good plaything for a man who feels like he needs to fucking  _ save  _ everyone. 

Bucky remembers the first day he woke up in the halfway house, confused and still high. Remembers accusing Steve of being a pervert with a savior complex. How fucking  _ right  _ he was. Steve was down to play when he could watch Bucky implode from a distance, but now he was too close. He could kiss all of Bucky’s scars all he wanted, but god forbid he acquire a few of his own. People like Bucky are second-class to people like Steve – he made that perfectly clear.

 

Bucky steams for a good long while, leaving tracks in the snow that only dragged slippers can make. He’s so frustrated that he starts to give himself a headache from clenching his jaw too tightly, mulling over Steve’s choked out disgust that he’d found himself in bed with one of the addicts in his  _ collection. _

It hurts worse than that, though. He had thought – he had really thought Steve was different. He had completely and utterly fallen for it. Steve was… Christ, handsome of course, but he’d seemed so  _ good _ . Right in the head, that sorta thing. Biggest heart. And if  _ Steve _ can’t see him for the whole person he is, who in God’s name will?

Bucky turns a corner, lets the air out of his lungs. He can’t be mad at Steve, not really. Steve’s right, after all; Bucky’s odds  _ aren’t _ good. He was a serious heroin addict and a cheap fuck for over a year – doesn’t exactly give him an outstanding grade in sexual health. Chances are… chances are… 

Christ, he thinks. What if he  _ does  _ have AIDS? It’s not the death sentence it used to be, but damn. Wouldn’t that be ironic? Just when life started getting good. To survive two tours overseas, to survive the heroin and the concussions and losing a whole arm, only to die from something a slip of rubber and some rubbing alcohol could’ve prevented.

Bucky starts to cool down. His anger’s been misplaced.  _ Denial,  _ Sam would say if he were here. After all, it’s Steve’s every right to know the sexual history of his partner – his  _ first  _ partner, Jesus – and Bucky’s defensive reaction is surely an admission of guilt more than anything else. He knew better. He  _ should’v _ e known better, dammit. It can’t just be Steve taking care of him all the time – he hasn’t been pulling his weight. That’s the thing about people like him, ain’t it? They just keep taking and taking.

The anger melts away, self-loathing curling up in its place in his chest.

He’d been so wrapped up in it all – in Steve wanting him, in wondering if he could still perform despite the heroin, in ignoring his psych drugs when no one was looking, in trying to get used to someone seeing all his scars – that he hadn’t stopped for one second to think about Steve’s safety. Christ, they hadn’t even bought  _ condoms _ . Steve deserves so much better – someone who’s not a flight risk and cesspool of whatever the streets have carried. Someone who would’ve thought of Steve’s needs before his own. Someone with a college education and making more than minimum wage at the local pedophile’s second-chance auto shop. Someone who doesn’t fall in his nightmares every single night, someone who doesn’t shake uncontrollably after a few  _ stitches _ . Someone who doesn’t take themselves off of their mood stabilizers for an erection. He’s an addict. Even if he doesn’t have the clap, he’s certainly got a chronic disease – one that won’t ever go away. James Barnes is a life sentence. He can’t put Steve through that. Steve’s got so much good work to do in this world, so many people to help, and get out of  _ prison _ , and house and feed and – Christ. Maybe it’s better that he left this way after all. Clean break. There’s gotta be a Greyhound to Brooklyn he could track down. His dad still has the pull-out couch.

He considers it, but not seriously. He doesn’t have the goddamn energy.

Bucky walks and walks. Discovers loose change in the pocket of his sweatpants and takes a city bus, not caring to look to see which direction it goes. He climbs off when the bus driver tells him that he’s shutting down for the night. As the sky starts to darken, he finds himself shuffling on the pavement in a sort of empty part of Detroit, slippers dragging on the cement; he’s never been here before. He’s not even sure where he  _ is _ . Vacated lots with big signs declaring the consequences of trespassing start to pepper the block he’s working his way down. There’s an abandoned community garden. Graffiti everywhere, though it sort of reminds him of home. He spots a few junkies, which makes his blood pressure spike, and a number of police cars roving the area, the racist fucks. He’s downright freezing now, but he doesn’t do anything about it. Pain and suffering are things that he signed up for the first time he injected, he tells himself. This is something he deserves. An adequate punishment for someone willing to jeopardize Steve’s health. 

He thinks about buying smack, but he hasn’t any money. Not that that was a problem for him back in the day – he’s as good at giving blowjobs as he is at swiping wallets off tourists on the subway. But even the thought of heroin isn’t getting his veins tingling like it used to; the high he’s looking for now is the kind of stomach-fluttering from looking up from his crossword or his cup of coffee to find a beefy 6-foot-2 blonde caught in the act of staring at him. But now he’s discovering that that kind of addiction comes with a whole different slew of withdrawals. Heartache. The feeling of being hollow. Never good enough. Ashamed.

This is a new rock bottom – he feels so shitty about himself that he doesn’t even think he’s worth a syringe of black tar. Wouldn’t want to waste the good stuff on a wallowing, self-indulgent fuck like him.

Creeping around the corners of the city and looking for trouble, Bucky spots all sorts of night-crawlers whispering, crack pipes shared, the grates of bodegas being lifted, graffitied car hoods and brandished guns. His people are calling him home, and he’s swimming in flashbacks and sick to his stomach. The sky darkens with his mood. 

It’s not too long before he spots her under the yellow of the street lights: a tortured-looking young woman with a smear of mascara running down her cheeks, looking not so much sad as tired as she leans against the glass of a storefront window, her figure framed by mannequins who haven’t been dressed in what looks like years. She brings a cigarette to her lips, and Bucky imagines Olivia Newton John saying,  _ “Tell me about it, stud.” _

Bucky doesn’t go up to her. He’s got nothing to offer a woman like that, down on her luck and hoping for a couple bucks, maybe to feed a kid or two, or buy her next hit, or both. He’s got sympathy for her, sure. She half-asses a smile at him when he passes her, fluttering her eyelashes, but he ignores it, hands pushing deeper into the pockets of his sweatpants, trying to conceal what he can of his vibranium arm. He’s suddenly aware that tech like his would go for a lot of money in these parts. Her look makes him uncomfortable and self-conscious; he dreams of being small, but instead glares a little and shows his teeth – the language of the streets, his armor. He shivers as he walks away under the streetlights before he hears yelling behind him.

“Stupid bitch!” comes a deep male voice that sends a very different kind of shiver down his spine. Bucky slows his walk, listening closely. “That’s probably the last jerk who’s gonna walk by all night. Are you even  _ trying? _ ”

Bucky freezes. He turns around, finding the tired woman face-to-face with a man who seems to have crept out of the shadows themselves. He’s ugly and bald and all up in her face. Something claws its way out of Bucky’s heart, a head-splitting anger he didn’t know himself capable of, and he turns on his heel.  _ How fucking  _ dare _ he? _

“Oh,  _ now _ you want some, faggot?” the man spits at him. Bucky almost doesn’t register the words.

He’s punching the asshole’s face before he even has the chance to acknowledge the flashbacks pouring in and obscuring his vision, somehow dislodged from where they’d been stockpiled, waiting to strike. In his mind’s eye, he sees.  _ Another ugly old white man, a guy named Pierce who always wore suits and worked on the City Council for shit’s sake, choking him against the wall in a Brooklyn alley, demanding more money from him. “That ain’t all they paid ya. Cough it up, Barnes, or I’ll hit you again.” His – his handler sending him out to corners all over the city, sucking cocks with the hopes that each client would come back for more. Pimped out by the most twisted of men, deep pockets, bribing police, all for the chance at another dose. Good stuff, Pierce always had the good stuff, could knock him out for days on end so he didn’t have to feel anything, didn’t have to see anything, could ooze the war and the taste of wrinkly sweat out of his mouth, out of his own goddamn memory. Wash, rinse, repeat. God, it was hazy. _

Bucky comes back to himself like someone’s thrown cold water in his face. His knuckles are coated in a fresh layer of blood, and the guy’s face is nearly unrecognizable. He’s breathing. That’s good. Bucky can’t add killer to his long list of unforgivable sins, not the least of them being the fact that he almost had unprotected sex with the most selfless person he’s ever met. 

Sound suddenly comes roaring back to Bucky – he hadn’t noticed its absence – but now it’s overwhelming and coupled with his own heartbeat blaring in his eardrums. The woman is screaming and crying, not nearly as pleased that he’s beat up her pimp as he thought she might be, though he certainly didn’t pummel him for the heroism of it. He plucks the word ‘boyfriend’ out of her angry, slurred speech and vomits right there on the sidewalk, though he can’t tell if it’s from the flashbacks or the fact that this poor woman is dating this fucking monster. It makes her scream louder; she’s pulling on her hair and punching her little fists against Bucky’s chest – not hard, just furious. He can’t focus enough to hear what she’s shouting at him. The world is spinning and though the woman’s lungs haven’t given out, her yelling is going in and out, a doppler effect even though he’s not moving, only swaying in place.  _ Pierce, commanding him, forcing him to beg, sending him on little missions that left him convulsing from nightmares sear through him, suppressed memories hitting him like bullets.  _

And he knows what it’s like to be hit by bullets.

_ Rumlow. Zola. They were a little team. Zola, the brains of the operation, making the drugs in underground warehouses-turned-sweatshops throughout the city. Rumlow, with the stun baton, always hovering, bodyguard to Pierce and to Zola. Hands everywhere without permission, slaps across the face even as they snickered and counted his money. Shoved into the wet concrete of the gutter, then given a towel and a cot to rest in, they’s waitin’ for him to be asleep before sneaking into bed with him, waking him up with the cold touch of fingers, letting strangers into his sheets while he was still so out of it. Obeying because it was the only thing he knew how to do. _

He remembers. Remembers working for Pierce only for a few weeks, never enjoying the work but so desperate that his pimp could have suggested just about anything and Bucky’d have done it. The heroin made him crazy. The memories have a dreamlike quality – he was on so many drugs, mixing so many concoctions, Zola testing out new recipes on the bottom feeders who couldn’t say no if they wanted to. Remembers showering off the stench of strange men and women in Natasha’s bathroom, ignoring her increasingly desperate demands for where he’s been all night. Remembers losing his memory for days at a time and being grateful for the fog, the things he didn’t have to remember. The fear engulfs him, his body rigid and trembling, the word  _ no  _ shoved deep in the back of his throat. He gags on it there on the sidewalk in the middle of a February night in Detroit.

Before he knows it, he’s paralyzed on the ground, limbs visibly shaking and the deep gasps of hyperventilation can only be coming from his own mouth, though he doesn’t feel the raspy breaths tearing through him. Sam taught him a word for this: panic attack.

It is not a good time for a panic attack.

The woman lumps it, her…  _ companion _ coming back to life with shallow breaths and standing up on unsteady feet. He spits on Bucky, blood all over his caved-in face and clearly broken nose, and they hobble off in a trail of curses.  _ Dickhead,  _ he thinks he hears. Bucky’s stuck, frozen, his internal screams becoming external whimpers until he can no longer distinguish between them. He’s sobbing. In the distance, a gunshot. He whimpers more. His brain zaps at him again, a  _ zing  _ at the back of his neck.

He endures like this for thirty minutes, rocking helplessly in the snow, before a figure comes to light in the distance. It’s a woman, an old lady, and she looks homeless. Briefly, he considers the idea that she might mug him. She’s got dark skin and wiry gray hair and soft eyes, and she’s moving in on him. He can’t move, can’t speak, and she introduces herself only as Mama Kat, hovering over him and obscuring his vision. Inspecting him the way mama’s do when they think their boys’s gettin’ too skinny. She’s a big woman, and Bucky can see that she’s missing teeth, and suddenly he can feel her gentle palm against his shoulder blades. The touch is accompanied by methodical sweet-nothings. Her touch is the antithesis of Pierce’s. It is warm. She tells him she could never take care of her own babies, but she’s still a mama at heart. She rubs his back gently, until he comes back into his body, is able to unfurl his clenched hands, metal and flesh. She calls him son, and he stays sideways on the concrete for a long while, her murmuring coming in and out. He becomes aware of a fleece blanket draped over him. It smells. It brings him back to life.

Finally, he plants his hands onto the sidewalk, the asymmetry of the metal and pale skin making him dizzy, and forces himself to get to his feet. He opens his mouth and his jaw pops. He sways, and Mama Kat coos toothlessly. He tries to thank her, but no words come out, so he touches his fingerless-gloved hand to her shoulder instead. Immediately, he regrets it – seeing the blood crusted into the wintery cracks of his knuckles sends another shock to his overwhelmed system. He swallows, takes a steadying breath, shakes his head a moment. Every muscle aches from being taught for so long. He’s not high, but it fucking feels like it.

“Go, Mr. Barnes,” Mama Kat coughs at him. She looks like she’s about ready to split herself. “Cops’ll be comin’ around here ‘fore long. Go on, get.”

“My... name,” Bucky says in a blur. He can’t get his eyes to focus on her properly.

“Ain’t that it?”

“Y-yeah. Barnes. How’d you know?” he says with a big swallow, trying not to let himself get sick right here.

“Dog tags,” she says with a wink, looking clever in her filthy pink bathrobe. Bucky wonders if she’s warm enough as his metal fingers slide up to clutch the tags around his neck. “Now you heard me, get. You look clean, boy. Get yourself off these here streets ‘fore they swallow you up. Mama Kat is out.”

With that, the plump homeless woman took off at an impressive rate, waddling away from him toward a shopping cart he hadn’t noticed before – he thought he saw two little yellow eyes poking out from where the baby seat ought to be. He watched her go, shivering. The one measly coat he’d put on wasn’t doing him much good, and he couldn’t feel his thighs anymore at all, frozen logs that still somehow propelled him forward. Her blanket, a red plaid fleece, was still draped around his broad, aching shoulders. There were tear tracks leading to the scruff of his incoming beard.

When homeless fairy godmothers tell you what to do, you do it. His feet start working again all on their own, and suddenly he’s moving, chest heaving, the blood drained from his face. He hasn’t eaten since breakfast, and he can feel it, but he marches on.

Blinking, he takes in his surroundings. It’s dark, save for the sparse streetlights casting an ominous yellow glow. Occasional snowflakes flutter down silently, like magic. The place seems deserted and oddly desolate – the result, he figures, of white flight rust belt bullshit. It’s all gray, industrial, and flat. Cement as far as he can see. Under the overpass across the street, there are a few homeless people huddled in a tent city. Perhaps where Mama Kat spotted him from. The smell of weed is loud and conspicuous – the gateway drug, he learned in school. Always funny to him how he skipped the relatively harmless herbal remedy and went straight for the fentanyl. From his vantage point, he can see not one but two vacant gas stations and a boarded up restaurant where someone emptied a whole a magazine of bullets. 

He sees what might be a spark, or a lighter, on the other side of the fogged glass in the boarded up restaurant. 

_Heroin,_ his brain supplies automatically. His hands roll into fists. Not the fighting kind of fists, no, the kind for grabbing a fistful of hair when he’s about to orgasm, or when the Giants score a game-winning touchdown. Fists clenched in excitement. No, better. _Anticipation._

Can veins be thirsty?

_ No. _ No, he can’t be seeing that right. They can’t, he can’t – that’s not what he’s seeing. No one is shooting up in the vacated restaurant. Because… well, because if that was what he was seeing, he might just find himself at the door, just might find himself knocking, find himself asking real slick-like, a ghost of the charming man his sister tells him he was, sweet-talking, just for one, one drop, he’ll hold the spoon, he’ll tie the rope, he’ll suck anyone off, he ain’t picky. Christ, it’s like he can  _ smell it.  _ He licks his lips like a fucking animal.

No. The house. The NA meetings. Clint and his fucking  _ kids.  _ Coulson’s. Steve.

_ Steve.  _

Fuck. Steve. He couldn’t have  _ Steve.  _ Even if he wasn’t pissed at him anymore, Steve had to know that their fooling around was only temporary, a fantasy for Bucky to get a taste of the good life. Stability, income, open channels of communication and support, clean sheets. Yeah, right. Sure, couple months, Steve could fool himself into thinking they were on an even playing field. But Bucky had a  _ disease. _ He was an addict, and that shit’s a death sentence one way or another. Tack on the PTSD, the bad attitude, and the high probability that he’s got gonorrhea, and it was a done deal. His only role in Steve’s life was to hurt him. That’s what people do when they’re hurricanes.

Bucky takes a step toward the boarded up restaurant, the faint glow inside. Someone’s started a small, contained fire. The windows get even foggier.

No. It’s a trick of the light. There can’t be a druggie in there. He’s imagining things. He can’t shoot up. He shouldn’t. He’s...he’s got work tomorrow, and Wanda wanted to try that new restaurant in Greektown, and Sam’s expecting him in the basement, and Dodge is going to be waiting by his door tomorrow morning to be let out, and he’s got this– this  _ watch _ on his wrist, this Christmas present (never mind that he’s Jewish) that means he’s got to be home before curfew, but it’s almost three in the morning and no one’s coming for him, and it’s better this way.

Isn’t it?

Bucky stands on the corner for a long, long time, feet planted to the sidewalk and snowflakes settling in his hair. Tears roll down his face, and the light in the vacant restaurant goes out. If he strains hard enough, he thinks he can hear the faint snores of the crackhead inside, hot-boxing on whatever the hell fogged up those windows.

After fifteen minutes of standing on the corner in a daze, and without warning or even planning to, Bucky turns on his heel, spots a 24-hour Denny’s glowing in the distance, and walks toward it, an eerie calm coming over him. His back is to the heroin. His back is to the fucking heroin, and he’s walking, and he’s not looking back, and it’s  _ fine.  _ He doesn’t hear the little bell ring as he pushes open the door, doesn’t look the hostess in the eye as he slips into a table she has not seated him at, shivers at a booth and feels the snowflakes in his hair melt as he shakes.

“Really?” his waitress asks, annoyed. She’s plump and black, her hair pulled back tight and a no-nonsense look on her face that he totally deserves. She almost looks like Mama Kat, but twenty years younger and employed. And with all her teeth, straight and in a row.

“Coffee,” he manages, hands making claws as they rest on his thighs. He has to be careful – the metal one could really do some damage. But so could the abandoned heroin in the vacant restaurant 1,029 steps away. So he glues himself to his seat, and he waits. “Please.”

When the coffee comes, his hand shakes so hard that he spills half of it all over the table.

“Man, you tweakin’?” his waitress accuses with an eye roll, mopping up the spilled cream with the dishrag from her apron. “I’ll have you sent right back out in the cold, boy, we don’t serve dope-fiends up in here.”

Bucky rubs his eyes with the heels of his palms. She doesn’t say anything about the fact that one of his hands is metal, or that the other is bloody. It is a small victory. Finally, he lifts his head up. “Clean eight months, ma’am,” he whispers. “It’s just been a really, really shitty night.”

“Prove it,” she says skeptically.

He reaches into his pocket for his NA card before realizing that he’s left it – and his wallet – at home.  _ Fuck.  _ There’s still a dollar’s worth of change in one of his pockets, whatever was left from the bus ticket, and at this point he’s just hoping that’ll cover the cost of the coffee.

“Left my card at home. I’m sober, ma’am. I swear. Haven’t shot up since June. Scout’s honor.”

“You can stay here and finish your coffee. But no more spillin’. If you’re sober, at least act like it.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still on a weird WiFi schedule, still sort of out of touch, still trying to write chapters with limited electricity under a mosquito net. Doing my best, but sorry if the updates are slow or the chapters aren't edited quite to my usual quality. I'm trying, friends. <3
> 
> Thanks so much also for all the comments. Feeling the love. They keep me going.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You...you might even see a good decision in this one. *swoon*

“It’s been three hours, man. Ain’t you got somewhere to be?” It’s the Denny’s waitress again, though she looks more exhausted than before. Bucky’s been taking up space at her table since three in the morning and has taken about two sips of his coffee, which is cold and spoiled now. He guesses her shift must be nearly over. Sunlight peeks through the big windows, and he can’t tell how long he’s been dozing. Everything has a surreal edge to it, like he’s sitting on the very hands of a Dali clock.

“Do I gotta?” Bucky asks, voice small as he rubs at his forehead, hunched over.

His waitress sighs. He finally read her name tag: Danielle. “I gotta bus your table soon, boy. It’s almost 6 in the mornin’. We gon’ get the early-risers up in here soon, can’t have ‘em lookin’ at you when you look like shit. No offense, kid. You’ll scare ‘em away. Go wash the blood off in the bathroom or somethin’ at least.” 

He does. The cracked bathroom mirror reveals exactly what he thinks it will: an insomniac covered in somebody else’s blood, bags under his eyes and hair plastered greasily to his forehead. When he’s a little more presentable and has splashed cold water on his face, he retakes his seat at the booth, thinking about the things his brain dredged up last night. Names he hadn’t even remembered.  _ Pierce. Rumlow. Zola.  _ Getting pimped out in Brooklyn’s back alleys and warehouses. What other memories had been filed away in the secret, inaccessible parts of his mind? What else was his body hiding from him?

“I didn’t say you could sit back down,” his waitress calls from across the restaurant. He’s still the only one in there. He could leave. He  _ should  _ leave. The cooks start swapping shifts.

But he also knows that there are about three spots he could probably get heroin from right out the front door of this Denny’s. The boarded up restaurant, sure, the fat fuck inside was probably still out from whatever he lit up last night, and there was no way the huddled masses beneath the overpass didn’t have something up their sleeve that they’d sell for cheap. Hell, even Mama Kat probably had an ounce of snow on her. That was how these things worked. Once you knew where to look, the whole world was your pharmacy.

If he moves from this spot, he’ll shoot up. Ain’t no way around it. He’s got nothing left in terms of resistance – if he goes through those doors, that’s it. Game over. Eight months sobriety down the toilet, bringing the number-of-days-since-last-hit calendar back to a whopping, pathetic zero. He can’t leave. Where in God’s name would he go?

“Who can we call to pick you up?” the waitress finally asks, though her voice comes to Bucky as if he were underwater. “Can I get you a cab or something, honey?”

“Don’t got anyone,” Bucky says when he’s capable of words again. His chest sags, and his eyelids are heavy. The words taste like copper though; even as he says them, he knows they’re a lie. There’s Sam. And Natasha. Clint. His sister, and her fiancé. There’s his old man, and Clint’s kids, and the dog. Dr. Gupta, even. And of course, unwaveringly, Steve. He doesn’t want Steve to see him like this, doesn’t much want Steve to see him again. Shame floods his veins, a different but equally toxic poison. But no matter how bad he doesn’t want to see Steve, no matter how ugly Bucky’s behavior, he knows in his heart of hearts that Steve would be here in a second if he knew where Bucky was. Christ, the moron must be so fucking worried. It hurt, to know how thoroughly he could rely on Steve, and how thoroughly he couldn’t return the favor, being who and what he was.

Well, that wasn’t true. He could be reliably unreliable. But that didn’t do any good.

“We need someone to come and collect you. You can’t stay here all day. Either I call someone or we kick you out. I got the cops on speed dial.”

“No! You can’t do that. You just – you can’t, please. Please don’t.”

“Are you homeless?”

“No.”

“Where’s home?”

_ Brooklyn. Hell. The super star board. Dodge’s kisses. Wanda’s nails in his hair. His mother’s cooking. Romania. Indiana. The halfway house. Heroin. Steve. _

Steve.

He sighs, defeated. “I’m livin’ in that halfway house in Delray.”

“The one with all the white people with funny names?”

He quirks a smile at that – he can’t help it. “The very same.”

“Well, we ain’t a taxi service,” she chides, equal parts annoyed and forgiving. “Who do I need to call?”

“I don’t know the phone number.”

“We have the yellow pages, you know.”

He sighs. “Rogers-comma-Steven.”

She pulls down the phone book, which thuds loudly on the counter by the register, and looks him up. With the Denny’s phone in hand, she dials Steve’s number. Bucky’s not surprised that Rogers answers on the first ring.

The waitress gives him a stern look.

 

\---

 

A very familiar Jeep rounds the corner and pulls into the cramped parking lot too fast, orange sunbeams bouncing off the forest green hood as it parks with a skid diagonally across two spaces. It’s not like Steve to do something so reckless.

Then again, it’s  _ exactly  _ like Steve to do something so reckless.

Steve looks utterly petrified, full-body tense and huge as he climbs out of the car, forgetting to lock it, nearly forgetting to close the door. He moves fast, like everything he’s ever loved is under siege. And, well.

Steve’s here.

It’s waxing on six in the morning, and Bucky knows he looks like hell. There’s dry blood caked on his knuckles and face no matter how hard he tried to wash it off with Denny’s watered-down soap, his hair is limp and sweaty, and he’s cocooned in Mama Kat’s red fleece blanket that smells a little like cat piss and cigarettes, though now he can’t help the feeling that he imagined her, a ghetto fairy godmother. His breath still smells like vomit, and his mouth tastes like something died in there. His hair is matted with sweat and snow and blood, and he’s got the grimy feeling that comes with staying up all night sitting in his skin. And he’s still wearing the stupid slippers. All in all, not a good look for him.

Steve doesn’t look so hot either, though, Bucky thinks as he watches him through the windows, pale and frantic and washed-out as he walk-jogs into the restaurant. It’s obvious from a single once-over that Steve hasn’t slept a wink. He pushes through the door with the single-mindedness of a man on a mission, also ignoring the waitress (who’s about had it with this bullshit) and his head swerves anxiously, scanning the restaurant. Finally, his eyes land on the restaurant’s sole customer, a broken, sullen twenty-something who could really fucking use a hug right now.

The relief that washes over Steve’s face is so palpable that Bucky vows then and there to never scare Steve Rogers ever again. His shoulders collapse from their rigid tension and his whole body goes concave at the sight of Steve. He knows he must look like a hurt puppy, visibly shaking in his seat with his limbs all tucked together. Fuck, the stupid  _ arms of the angels  _ song from the sad humane society commercials would honestly be fitting right now. He’s not sure he trusts himself to move just yet, so instead he shoots Steve his most apologetic look and a pained half-smile that can only mean  _ I’m sorry.  _

Steve crosses the restaurant in four strides, ignoring the waitress who says something snarky like, “This one yours?” On seeing Steve, the blood returns to Bucky’s drawn limbs, and he stands now as the mass of Steve barrels into him for a squeeze-your-heart-out kind of hug that almost makes Bucky’s feet leave the ground. Bucky folds himself against Steve, standing strong and steadfast, clings to him like a boulder in a raging river.

“You scared the hell out of me,” Steve says into Bucky’s hair, grease and blood be damned, arms wrapped tight around Bucky’s middle like he’s not going to let go for a very, very long time. It impresses Bucky how strong Steve is. “Jesus, Bucky. I’m– I’m so sorry, Buck. I’m so sorry.” 

There is no more anger. There is no more blame. They’re just two guys from Brooklyn, in a Denny’s, in Detroit, clinging to one another for dear life. ‘Cause sometimes that’s just the way the wind blows.

After a time, Steve pulls off, wanting to see his face. Two strong hands cup Bucky’s chin on either side, and Steve just looks at him in amazement. There are a hundred words Bucky wants to say to him.  _ I fucked up.  _ Or  _ I think I had a panic attack.  _ Or  _ you deserve better.  _ Or  _ I hope you are okay with the fact that things like this are going to happen if you date someone like me. _ But he opens his mouth and shuts it when he realizes that there are tears streaming down his face. Even the goddamn waitress is dabbing her eyes.

Steve, his savior for the umpteenth time, says just about the only thing Bucky is ready to hear right now. His heavy arm falls over Bucky’s shoulders.

“Let’s get you home.”

It doesn’t escape Bucky’s notice that with a slip of the hand, Steve leaves a twenty dollar tip on the table as he escorts Bucky out of there.

\---

 

Steve generously turns the heat on high for the long drive home – Bucky’d really gotten himself far – and Bucky can finally stop shivering, though Steve must say the word  _ pneumonia  _ at least six times on their way back to the house. When his teeth stop chattering, Bucky lets the rest of his muscles relax and works to actively drop the tension he’s holding in his back, his jaw, his limbs. His muscles ache from how long he’s been contracting them.

Steve doesn’t seem to feel the need to say much, though he looks over at Bucky with a worried expression every minute or two. He turns on low jazz and offers his hand to Bucky, who takes it without question and holds on tight for the entire ride. Intermittently, Steve will squeeze his hand and look over at him from the driver’s seat, as if reassuring himself that Bucky’s still in the car.

Steve doesn’t ask if he’s been using.

Steve doesn’t check his sleeve for needle marks.

Steve doesn’t comment on the blood on Bucky’s T-shirt.

Steve doesn’t look at his pupils too long, or check his temperature, or his pockets, or show any hesitation in his willingness to hold Bucky’s hand and stroke the back of it with his thumb.

Steve doesn’t show anything but whole-hearted trust for his heroin-addicted maybe-boyfriend who just disappeared for more than twelve hours and was found shivering in a Denny’s on the other side of the city.

It’s merciful is what it is. 

Steve keeps quiet as he helps Bucky out of the car, guides him in a robotic walk to his bedroom on the first floor, and shuts the door softly behind the both of them. He leads Bucky to the bed and lets him sit of his own accord, the springs adjusting under his weight.

“You want to be left alone, Buck?” Steve asks gently. “Can I get you anything?” He looks more relaxed, now that Bucky is warm and home. Bucky sits still on the edge of his bed, just sort of staring at the wall, unseeing. “You wanna talk about it?”

“Please, no,” Bucky whispers back, eyes flitting to Steve and answering all three questions at once. He concentrates hard on maintaining eye contact. It grounds him in the room.

“Okay, baby,” Steve says, turning off the lights and stepping carefully in the direction of the bed as his eyes adjust. “I’m here, Buck, I ain’t goin’ anywhere.” It’s a Monday. It’s 7 am. They both have work.

_ I ain’t goin’ anywhere. _

“You mean that?” Bucky says.

“I mean it.”

“What if… what if there’s things you don’t know about me that you won’t like?”

“I’m sure there’s things I don’t know about you that I won’t like. That’s how this stuff works. You could tell me you want to move to Jersey and I might throw up in my mouth, but it doesn’t change the fact that I care about you, or that I want to still see where this thing goes. I think you think I’m gonna be surprised by something, Buck, but I promise you, I’ve seen it all. And I don’t care. I mean, I care, but I want to work on it, together. I like the Bucky I see right here in front of me, and that means I’m at peace with all things that made you who you are today. Good and bad. I don’t scare so easy, Buck. ”

Bucky makes a face. “I’ll never want to move to Jersey.”

“See? I knew I liked you.” 

That makes Bucky shiver in a way that has nothing to do with the temperature. He moves toward the pillows now, slow, like he’s moving through jelly, his muscles aching like he’s run a half-marathon. Bucky curls up into a ball near the top of the mattress, a few inches of space between him and the rise and fall of Steve’s chest.

“May I?” Steve asks, turning on his side so that he and Bucky are face to face on Bucky’s humorously small twin bed.

Bucky shakes his head. No cuddling, not tonight – er, today. Whatever time it is. Steve might have forgiven him, and Bucky might’ve forgiven Steve, but he made a point yesterday – Bucky’s got baggage, and until he gets it checked by a doc, he doesn’t want Steve to touch him. Doesn’t want to pass this filth onto the next guy. He still feels dirty in a way that has nothing to do with the blood, or laying on the concrete, or the blanket. Steve asks if he wants to shower, but Bucky shakes his head catatonically. 

They lay like that, facing each other, blue eyes meeting steel gray with matching dark circles under them, for a good long time.

 

\---

 

“What time’s it?” Bucky startles awake, his voice coming out unused and scratchy; there’s too much sunlight streaming in through the blinds of his first-floor window, and he feels disoriented. He jumps up and nearly smacks Steve’s chin with the back of his head. Steve?

They’ve spent the entire night – day – together. The events of the last 24 hours slot into place. Steve asking him if he’s been tested. Leaving with only the clothes on his back. Mama Kat. Denny’s. The fucking opium den of an abandoned restaurant beckoning to him like an old friend. The panic attack and flood of suppressed memories.

Fucking  _ yikes. _

“Slow down, cowboy,” Steve says half-asleep, coming into himself as well. “Called Coulson’s last night. Told ‘em you have food poisoning. Figured you could use a day off, pal. We slept in.” Steve’s right. The watch on Bucky’s nightstand says it’s four in the afternoon. 

“They know I’m an addict. Coulson’s gonna be pissed.”

“Phil Coulson’s not gonna fire his best mechanic,” Steve says with a little I-know-I’m-right tilt of his head, and then swoops in to kiss Bucky on the forehead. “You have food poisoning.”

Steve stretches back into the pillows, fingers laced behind his head and arms flared to reveal tufts of blonde armpit hair. A while passes. It’s nice to see Steve not in a rush for once.

“Thanks for picking me up,” Bucky finally says. His voice is rough; it causes Steve to open his eyes, and then his arms. Bucky buries himself in them automatically, like breathing.

“Thanks for coming home,” Steve says, a sad smile on his lips. “You gonna tell me what happened?” 

“Not yet,” Bucky replies honestly. They’ll have that conversation, but not this minute. The day is too young to be ruined. “First, I need a ride.”

“Where are we going?” Steve asks, raising an eyebrow. Bucky throws a pillow playfully in his face, settling on the  _ we _ .

“Planned Parenthood, chump.”

  
  



	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't want to give anything away, so trigger warnings are at the end. This is just a generic... trigger warning. For hard stuff. Y'all already know the content areas of this fic - it's nothing out of left field.

You do crazy things for those you love. At least, that’s what Bucky’s thinking as he’s getting his blood drawn and staring at the smiling faces in the posters on the wall and trying very, very,  _ very  _ hard not to think about needles. He misses Dr. Gupta, and he wishes Steve had come inside, was holding his hand, but he’d asked him to stay in the car, and Steve had obliged, the damn gentleman. 

Well, first he’d asked Steve if he wanted to get tested, too.

Steve had licked his lips and looked away. “I, uh, I already got tested, Buck.”

“When?” Bucky asked, incredulous. Steve was a virgin?  _ Wasn’t he? _

“After we road-tripped to New York. There were a few contact-transmission STIs I wanted to know about. I figured it couldn’t, y’know, hurt.”

“You got tested after the blowjobs,” Bucky had said slowly. It probably should have been a question, but it came out like a statement. Or an accusation. Oops.

“I, sorry, Buck, I just wanted to be safe. I might’ve been a little overcautious, I don’t know. I needed to make sure I couldn’t give you anything. And… y’know, it’s hard but… but some stuff can be transmitted during oral… ”

Bucky remembered. Steve had sucked him off, that electrifying night in Nat’s New York City shoebox, but Steve had asked to just grind against Bucky to get off. He’d thought – he’d thought it was a virginity thing… 

The whole time, Steve had been afraid of giving  _ him  _ something. That was Steve’s default setting at all times – making sure nothing he did could hurt anyone around him. Taking on the risks but never dealing them out. He was a protector; it was in his genes. The guy had more altruism than those fucking dolphins Bucky read about in  _ Nat Geo  _ in the waiting room, where the healthy ones bring the sick ones to the surface to breathe. Steve was as pure as a goddamn  _ dolphin.  _

“You…” Bucky started, but he hadn’t thought of anything to say. His  _ virgin boyfriend  _ got tested before he did. Had been forced to double-check that the old junkie he was hooking up with hadn’t given him anything life-threatening. Yet.

Bucky had sighed, deciding not to be mad, even if it rubbed him the wrong way and made him feel about 4,000% worse. Steve had thought of  _ everything.  _ And dammit, it really  _ was  _ Steve’s right to know, no matter how it churned Bucky’s stomach. So he softened, kissed Steve on his clean-shaven cheek and unlocked the passenger door, and walked in alone past one lowly “pro-life” protester. 

“Fuck off, the world’s overpopulated as it is,” he snapped at her. She glared back.

Admittedly, this was something Bucky needed to do on his own. He hadn’t exactly wanted Steve to hear that his number of sexual partners was unknown but well past fifty, or the part where he checked all three boxes – anal, vaginal, oral – but knew Steve could only check the one. But his heart is pounding so hard he can feel his pulse in the soles of his feet, and there’s a rushing in his ears. He can do this. Thirty more seconds.

The doctors are generous. They do not mention the obvious scarring on his thighs when he’s asked to drop his pants. The cotton swab is uncomfortable but doesn’t hurt. Peeing in the cup is easy, routine. They’ll have the results in 1-2 days, they assure him. When he asks, blushing, if he could have given Steve anything when he let him blow him, they tell him oral transmission of most STIs is uncommon, though they recommend he use protection from now on. He tries to muster a smile for them. He’s not sure he manages it. On an ordinary day, he might feel undignified being in a place like this, with its crying babies and overworked doctors, but he’s still puffing out his chest for not caving in last night. He didn’t do heroin. He had the chance, and he  _ didn’t do heroin. _ He could sing.

He leaves Planned Parenthood with an armful of pamphlets – on safe sex, on anal sex, on consent, on impotence, on toys. He almost grabs one on pregnancy, but he’s not sure if Steve will think it’s funny or not. But he takes a stack, half-embarrassed and half-pleased, and stalks out of the waiting room to the car where Steve is patiently waiting for him.

“Whatcha got there?” Steve aks, eyeing the pamphlets.

“Clear your evening,” Bucky says smugly. “We’ve got some required reading to do.” He wiggles his eyebrows at Steve.

“What, you pick up the Kama Sutra?” 

“For  _ gays _ .”

 

He and Steve drive to the river before heading home. Bucky’s been quiet about last night; the fight, the panic attack, the feelings of worthlessness piled so high that he couldn’t breathe under the weight of them. They find a park bench and look across the river at Canada – Windsor, Steve tells him, though that doesn’t mean anything much to Bucky – enjoying the unexpected day off and the quiet companionship they’ve come to negotiate. It somehow feels like an end, this last moment of bliss before the results come back, before everything could change. It would be one thing to  _ feel  _ like an infection; it would be wholly other to actually have poisoned Steve with his disgusting and relentless past.

“I owe you an apology,” Bucky starts; Steve was uncharacteristically quiet, surely waiting for him to begin. He’s good at things like that. Steve gives Bucky so much leeway for healing that he’s not sure what to do with it. Steve’s given him a lot of slack – it’s about time Bucky started pulling on the rope again. 

“You don’t have to–”

“I do,” Bucky cuts him off. He _does._ He has to apologize. “I had no right to be mad about you lookin’ out for your own safety. I shouldn’t have been so careless. Just because chances are that I have HIV doesn’t mean that I can go around givin’ it to people. That wasn’t responsible of me, and more importantly, it… it wasn’t nice.” Steve’s mouth is a flat line, but he listens. “One of these days I’m gonna figure out that you’re not lying to me,” Bucky adds with a humorless laugh. “One of these days I’ll believe you when you tell me that you don’t see me for the pathetic piece of shit that I am, but it’s gonna be a long, long time before I come around and believe you when you say I’m worth all this.” He gestures vaguely. Steve never breaks eye contact. He waits his turn; when Bucky doesn’t continue, he opens his mouth.

“I’m sorry, too, Buck. I’m sorry I didn’t bring it up in the right way, or the right time. I’ve been working with Sam for years, I should’ve known better. I’m sorry I don’t know what I’m doing in this relationship – I’ve never had one before and honestly? I’m terrified of screwin’ this one up. And I’m sorry I haven’t done enough to make sure you believe me when I promise you you’re worth all this. And more.” Steve’s gotta stop looking so damn hurt all the time; it’s gonna break Bucky’s heart right in his chest. “How can I make you believe me?” Steve asks, lip trembling dangerously.  _ Let’s not have a cry-fest in this park, Rogers. C’mon now. _

“Steve,” he says gently, “Look at me. You did everything right. You’re pretty damn good at this. I just got some triggers that don’t like bein’ pulled, that’s all. And I don’t even know what they all are. I’ve been… reliving some things. Memory’s coming back at weird times in ways I can’t explain.”

“PTSD,” Steve whispers, mostly to himself, as he comprehends, though Bucky’s had the diagnosis for months. 

“Er, right,” Bucky responds stiffly. There’s about a week’s worth of mood stabilizers and antidepressants that have mysteriously gone missing, and Bucky knows he ought to tell Steve, but he’s already in enough trouble as it is and it’s not like he isn’t planning to restart them  _ soon _ , but before he even has a chance to decide if he should bring them up, Steve’s pulling him out of his own head.

“What happened? The other night, I mean. Bucky, I was so worried.”

Bucky welcomes the change of subject.“Look, Steve, I thought… when you wouldn’t, well, fuck me, I thought it was because I was too dirty, you know? Damaged goods. That you thought you could stomach it right up until the moment was there, and then realized you couldn’t do it after all.” 

“You’re not–”

“I know,” Bucky settles the issue with a quick kiss on the corner of Steve’s lips. “Thank you.” He looks Steve in the eye to make sure he knows that he means it, then goes on. “But I didn’t want to confront the real consequences of my past. Didn’t want to think about dying when I was just getting a hold of this whole  _ living  _ thing. I’m so...ashamed of it. The amount of drugs I took? Christ. I could’ve OD’d any day of the week. The ways I managed to get money, the people I conned. The…  _ favors _ … I did.” Now he’s cringing; he has to stop for a moment. He doesn’t want Steve to see the hurt. He swallows, centering himself. “I didn’t want to think that I might be more diseased than I already felt.” 

“You know it doesn’t matter to me,” Steve says, softly, placing a gloved hand on Bucky’s knee. 

“It matters to me,” Bucky says sadly. “It’s all I think about. The people I’ve hurt. The damage I’ve done. Trying to tell myself that I’m a good person when it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it. And just when I think I might be making progress, I go and put my best guy in danger like it’s nothing.”

“I know you’re a good person, Bucky,” Steve says. Bucky lays his hand over Steve’s. 

“You know I stole money from a homeless mom and her baby, once?”

“It’s in your past; it wasn’t your fault.”

“No one injected me with heroin the first time, Rogers. That was a choice  _ I  _ made. This is on  _ me _ .”

Steve shakes his head. “And the doctors who over-prescribed when you came back from the war. And the lack of resources for returned veterans, especially amputees with shell shock. And the assholes who make rehab overpriced so only white collar yuppies can get help. And the politicians who started the war on drugs. And the criminalization of sex work. And the trauma of the violence you saw in the military. Should I keep going?”

Bucky laughs humorlessly but places a gloved hand on Steve’s knee as if to say thank you. The rush of wind coming off the river blows his hair in his face. “That’s alright. I’ll get there someday, maybe, pal. Maybe someday.”

Steve’s face turns serious. “Where did you go?” Well, they were bound to talk about it eventually.

“Nowhere in particular. Got caught up in a scuffle.”

“What kind of scuffle? Are you hurt?” Steve’s body jerks to attention.  _ Cute, Steve. _

“No, no, I don’t think the guy was even armed. Just bruised knuckles. I overheard a pimp yelling at his girl, couldn’t take it. Clocked him.”

“That why you were so shaken up?”

“Yeah, I... uh... there was a time when...this guy… he… ” Bucky swallows, hard. The words won’t come out. Steve says nothing, patient as a shard waiting for the currents to turn him to sea glass. “I was one of  _ his _ , back home. I, uh, I did some ugly stuff. He made me do some ugly stuff. And he did some ugly stuff… to me.” 

Bucky can tell that Steve so badly doesn’t want to gasp, but he does anyway. It’s clear by the range of emotions that flit across his open-book face that Steve is pissed and hurt and  _ ready to fight someone  _ all at once. It’s like a switch has been turned on.

“Buck… ” Steve manages, voice thick with emotion.

Another swallow before he can talk.

“I ain’t proud of it.”

Steve shakes his head, not with disapproval or disappointment like Bucky was expecting, but with sympathy. 

“It wasn’t you, Buck.”

“Doesn’t mean I didn’t do it.”

“C’mere,” Steve says, shaking his head. Bucky shifts against his side, let’s Steve’s arm fall around his shoulders. “No one – you hear me? –  _ no one _ deserves that.”

“It doesn’t matter to you?”

“Of course it doesn’t matter to me, only that I want to kill this asshole with my bare hands. Bucky, you bein’ exploited and abused and taken advantage of – well, it makes me hate the world a little, but it doesn’t change the way I feel about  _ you _ . Except that it’s gonna be hard for me to let you outta my sight for the next couple days.”

“Really?”

“Really, punk.”

Bucky’s chest rises and falls – he hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath.

 

\---

 

When they get home, they are bombarded.

“I know you said you didn’t, Barnes, but it’s house rules – you miss curfew, you pee in a cup. Simple as that. Results are confidential. Normally, Steve and I’d make the decision together, but Steve’s obviously got a horse in the race – is that a saying? I’m makin’ that a saying – so I decide what we do after we get the results.” Sam Wilson is being very lecture-y in the kitchen, and Bucky’s not quite sure how he feels about his therapist being in charge of his fate at this exact moment. But it’s not exactly like they have an HR department. Steve, Sam, and Bucky had agreed, back when he and Steve started going steady, that if any trouble arose on the heroin side of things, Sam would be in charge as the most neutral party. Bucky’s sort of annoyed about it, like they anticipated something going wrong from the get-go.

Then again, if the shoe fits.

“There’s not gonna be a  _ decision _ , Sam, I swear I didn’t  _ use _ ,” Bucky says forcefully, throwing his hands up with frustration.

Sam looks like it hurts him to do this, but he stretches out a regretful hand anyway, drug-testing cup perched in his long fingers. Sam Wilson knows that addicts can be liars.

“Fine.” With a cocky faux-smile, Bucky unzips his pants right there in the kitchen to make a point. Sam’s eyebrows shoot up, and Wanda makes a disapproving sound in the back of her throat and moves upstairs, cursing in Sokovian. 

“C’mon,” Steve urges placatingly, pressing a strong hand against Bucky’s back, trying to lead him to the bathroom before he pulls out his cock in front of everyone. Steve doesn’t force him, but his hand is firm and telling. Bucky locks eyes with Wilson but follows Steve’s gentle pushes toward the bathroom on the first floor. He doesn’t break eye contact with Sam the entire time.

 

He emerges from the bathroom, still glaring, and hands over his piss with perhaps a tad too much enjoyment to Sam’s purple-latex-gloved hand. “Drink up,” Bucky says sarcastically, dark eyes boring into Sam, who is made of stone; if Bucky’s attitude is getting to him, he doesn’t let it show. Bruce comes downstairs with his own gloves on, as he’s the only one who actually understands chemistry around here, and salutes Barnes with a crooked smile. Bucky saves his glaring for Wilson – he wouldn’t take away the genuine joy Banner gets from at-home science any day. 

“Should be done in about ten minutes, Sergeant,” Bruce tells him. The damn guy has  _ goggles  _ on for shit’s sake. Bucky’s ready to plop down at a bar stool at the island and wait for the results, but Steve grabs his hand.

“We’re going to get burgers,” Steve says with a certain, hard edge in his voice. Bucky recognizes that edge. Steve is planting his flag and standing his ground, on Bucky’s team, and Christ, it’s kind of turning Bucky on.

“Don’t you want to wait?” Sam asks, a little miffed. Seems he was hoping the Captain would be on his side.

“Bucky said he was clean,” Steve says simply, with a little shrug of his massive shoulders. “C’mon, I’m starving.” That part was just for him. So was the dazzling smile that came with it.

Bucky sticks his tongue out at Sam. Burgers sound great.

 

Ten minutes later, Steve receives a text from Sam.

 

**Today, 7:58 pm**

**From: Sam Wilson**

He’s clean.

 

**From: Sam Wilson**

But tell him he’s still on my (s)hit list.

Steve shows the screen to Bucky. 

“Thanks for believing me,” Bucky garbles around a mouthful of sesame seed bun.

“Thanks for being someone I can trust.”

 

\---

 

Bucky goes back to work on Wednesday.  _ “Steve told them you had the stomach flu. Might as well take advantage and cash in the 48 hours,”  _ Loki had advised him Monday night when he and Steve had come back from Five Guys. He took Tuesday off – read the Planned Parenthood pamphlets, took Dodge to the park, glared through an additional therapy session with Sam in the basement, and tried to catch up on sleep, though his insomnia’s been acting up lately and the usual nightmare (falling, always falling) was somehow more intense last night. The bags under his eyes are getting on Clint’s level. 

When Bucky gets home in the afternoon – by bus, Steve had to go to the prison to meet with Murdock – Wanda’s on the couch, her legs not curled around Vision’s middle for once. She’s chewing gum, loudly, and she’s got a towel around her neck with orange-purple stains – she must have just dyed her hair.

“You got mail,” she says flatly, very much  _ not  _ looking up from her magazine of floral arrangements but clearly speaking to Bucky. He’s the only one downstairs. Her bubble gum pops.

“When’re you gonna stop being mad at me?” Bucky asks pleadingly, grabbing a snack from the kitchen and calling out over his metal shoulder as he opens the fridge. His work duffel lands on the countertop with a loud  _ thunk. _

“Why, does it bother you?” she asks in a baby voice. “Should’ve thought of that before you missed curfew and scared us all half to death.” She flicks the page so hard it makes a  _ snapp _ ing sound. 

“I didn’t use,” Bucky tries, sitting next to her on one of the mismatched chairs in the living room. “Sam even tested me. I didn’t use.”

“And I don’t care,” she retorts, long purple nails skimming the page as she searches for something, a price maybe, or something more pastel. Or maybe nothing at all.

“C’mon, Wanda–”

“It’s Scarlet.”

Bucky’s taken aback, and sits up like he’s been hit by something. His hand starts to tremble (though it’s been doing that a lot lately). She’d told him her real name in a moment of trust. Scarlet was her street name, just like Clint’s was Hawkeye and Vision’s was, well, Vision. Dr. Banner, of course, only used his alias – The Hulk – in online chatrooms where he and other nerds would discuss the chemical properties of LSD using re-routed VPNs. 

But Wanda didn’t pass out her real name like Halloween candy – no, she kept her real name close to her heart and only gave it to people who she thought deserved it. Bucky thought he’d for sure made her good list. They… they were friends. 

Weren’t they?

“I, W–  _ Scarlet _ , I’m sorry, okay? I fucked up, I didn’t mean to scare ya. I… I remember how scary it was when Clint didn’t come home. I never meant to hurt anybody. I wasn’t thinkin’ straight.”

She dog-ears the page and sets the magazine down, and Bucky wonders idly if she has any knives on her person. With grace, Wanda rolls up the sleeves of her pink cardigan to reveal the black-ink tattoos on her wrists, looking Bucky dead in the face.

“You know how my parents died?” she asks, smiling dangerously at him. She is fierce for someone covered in pink as she is.

Bucky frowns. Now that he thinks about it, he  _ doesn’t  _ know how her parents died.

“Fucking,” she supplies with traces of failed amusement on her face. “Fucking in an abandoned building, my brother and I fast asleep in our bunk bed at home. They were shit-faced, and the second floor of the abandoned laundromat they were humping in fell through. Condemned building. And you know how I found out? ‘Cause they  _ didn’t come home _ . So excuse me for not being fucking proud of you for not shooting up on Sunday, but y’know, that’s kind of the  _ bare minimum  _ for human decency. People not coming home is a bit of a sore spot for me, you got it? I can’t keep people around who only care about themselves. I’ve had about enough of that bullshit, thank you very much.”

She uncrosses her heels from where they’re resting on the coffee table and gets up hastily, struting upstairs in her white skinny jeans, hair swishing back and forth over the towel behind her. He could swear he sees her wipe her eyes as she darts away from him.

“Shit,” he curses under his breath. The insults he wants to hurl back at her never quite make it all the way out.

Wanda did have  _ one _ thing to say worth hearing: Bucky did have mail. 

He takes the mail into his room and shuts the door – it’s the test results from Planned Parenthood (as if it would be anything else). The address is written in pink, as if that isn’t a giveaway, and the envelope is thick, which makes him nervous. 

He’d had to tell the nice women at Planned Parenthood that he didn’t have an email, which is where they usually send results. He could’ve given them Steve’s, but he’d rather see the results for himself first.

Maybe he should get an email. Or start training for a marathon, learn to knit, let Wanda yell at him some more – Bucky’s open to pretty much any opportunity to procrastinate the opening of this letter. He gives himself a once-over in the mirror. Does some sit-ups. Puts his dirty clothes in the hamper. Fidgets with the blinds on his window. There’s not much to keep him occupied, and the unopened Planned Parenthood letter is like a black hole, sitting on his chair, absorbing all the energy in the room. Bucky wants it to be like one of those angry letters from the  _ Harry Potter  _ movies Bruce made him watch – he wants the letter to just tell him everything in one foul burst and get on with it. But the envelope isn’t a howler, and there is no magic, and it’s about damn time this worn out, worn down veteran-addict found out what he contracted in his foolish youth. 

Bucky feels like he’s in a movie, like he’s opening up a college acceptance letter or something. Like there’s a hidden camera in the room, and everyone in the house is waiting behind the door to yell, “Gotcha!” Of course, he’s  _ not  _ opening a college acceptance letter (and the irony of _ that _ isn’t lost on him. Good students get college acceptance letters. Heroin addicts get to find out if they contracted HIV). He opens the seal carefully, trying not to tear it, and pulls out the tri-folded papers. His eyes scan the pages hungrily, trying to make sense of the figures and percentages of his blood work.  _ Great, okay, he doesn’t have diabetes, but where’s the stuff on HIV– _

Negative.

_ Negative. _

Negative.

Bucky could cry.

By some miracle, his test results come back negative for everything except chlamydia, which the papers say is completely treatable. There is a force somewhere in this universe that is determined to keep him alive, and he’s not going to question it now.  _ Negative. _ He wants to get it tattooed on his forehead.  _ Negative, negative, negative.  _ It’s like a song, or a heartbeat. 

He falls back on his bed with the papers clutched to his chest, beaming. He’ll call about the antibiotic in the morning. And he’ll tell Steve the good news tonight.

_ Gah.  _ Negative!

 

With a skip in his step powered by how incredulous he is that he  _ didn’t  _ contract HIV in all his time on the streets doing the dirty, not all of them rubbered, Bucky heads toward the front door, his keys in one hand and wallet in the other. He’s mulled it over and wants to pick Wanda –  _ Scarlet _ – up some flowers, try to make it up to her. And maybe something sweet for Steve, too.

“Not so fast.”

It’s Clint, arms crossed as he steps in front of the door, blocking Bucky’s exit and giving him a harsh look. Bucky rolls his eyes. Sure, yes, okay, he had  _ one  _ bad night. But so has Clint! And Wanda. Thor did a  _ lot _ of time in prison. Clint blew up a fucking meth lab. Everyone here has made their mistakes – wasn’t that kind of the point?

And Bucky didn’t even  _ get _ smack. He’d resisted! He made good on what all the people in NA made him promise. He sat himself down in the Denny’s and waited like a goddamn punk. Sure, it was hard. Sure, he was shaken. Sure, he missed curfew. He’s not saying it was an  _ ideal  _ way to spend his night. But he won the battle. Shouldn’t they be fucking  _ proud  _ of him, instead of cornering him only to tell him how bad he’d fucked up? 

Christ, didn’t they already know how deeply he was buried in his own shame?

_ What is it?  _ Bucky signs to Clint who’s still blocking the door with a hardened facial expression. Bucky prefers sign language for this – the quieter their conversation, the better.  _ You mad at me, too? _

_ ‘Course I’m mad. You’re one of the best damn things that’s happened to this shithole in a long time, and you just went running out on us. I literally called out to you and you didn’t give me so much as a backward glance. I don’t care if you have beef with Steve. The rest of us give a shit, too, and it would’ve been nice to at least know you weren’t bleeding out in a ditch somewhere. _

_ Woah. _ Bucky signed. Clint was signing so fast, it was almost hard for Bucky to keep up.  _ I’m sorry I didn’t come home. I had a panic attack. Give me a break. _

_ Get your ass home next time. At curfew.  _

“You’re one to talk,” Bucky bit back, his anger so forceful that he spoke aloud.

_ You have more potential than me, kid. Fucking use it. _

“Potential? What potential? I’ve got PTSD, memory loss, heroin addiction,  _ chlamydia,  _ panic attacks, and no college education. Oh, and erectile dysfunction, if you were wondering. So don’t fucking lecture me about my _ potential _ . I washed that shit down the drain in my own blood. Besides, my ‘potential’ is none of your damn business. So stop projecting your life’s failures onto me. I can do whatever the fuck I want,” Bucky spits back angrily, his voice rising an octave. The rage fills him, like a tea bag settling into hot water. It infuses him. He’s surprised he doesn’t punch Barton in the face.

“Quit yelling,” Wade whines from the couch, completely unfazed by the whole thing. “I’m trying to catch up on  _ Dancing with the Stars  _ over here.”

“Christ,” Clint mutters aloud, rubbing his temples.

“‘m Jewish,” Bucky replies sarcastically, then slips around Clint and out the front door. He can hear Steve’s voice in his head – _ it’s only because they’re worried about you. It’s a sign of love.  _ And yeah – imaginary Steve has a point, but that doesn’t mean he wants his friends to be his fucking babysitters. Does  _ no one _ trust him not to relapse? Have they so little faith? Have their eyes always been following him this closely, just waiting for him to fuck up? He wonders bitterly if behind closed doors they wage bets on how long they think he’ll last.

He remembers back to the house meeting they’d had when Barton relapsed. Sam had covered the statistics as if he knew them like the back of his hand.  _ Ninety-one percent of users relapse after they go through treatment.  _

The decision settles in Bucky’s eyes before it even reaches his brain, but his resolve is set. His body goes cold, wintry in a way that has nothing to do with the inclement weather outside. He feels the way he used to feel when Pierce was all over him, making him perform, hold out, last longer, until finally he would grant Bucky his sacrilege release – a pill, a baggie, a pipe. A hit, whatever form it took, sometimes just a literal raw slap in the face. Bucky’s been waiting. Bucky’s been good. But now, it feels like he’s stepped back into the past, and his eyes snap open wide, and he knows what he needs.

If an addict’s all they think he is, then an addict’s what they’re going to get. 

Bucky moves down the street in a cold, calculated fashion. A numbness – an acceptance – washes over him, and his brain turns off, like he’s been wiped. He’s got a mission, one mission, and no feelings about it whatsoever. This is what’s happening. This is how he goes from point A to point B. Geometry. A line is the shortest distance between two points. 

Bucky’s flooded with the odd sensation that he’s been holding his breath underwater for too long, and now it’s time to come up for air. He’s never celebrated Easter, but this must be akin to finishing Lent, like he’s finally allowed the thing he’s long given up, simply as a reward for holding out. He ran a good race, but this is the finish line. He  _ went _ to the Public Hearing without ceremony or complaint. He’d  _ gone _ into the depths of Detroit after dark, caught a whiff of the forbidden fruit, and backed away slowly. He had done it all. He had proven to them – to himself – that he could be sober. 

And what better way to celebrate his victory than with a syringe of the good stuff?

Bucky stalks past the flower shop owned by the Iranian couple where he’d intended to buy Wanda a bouquet of baby’s breath; his lips curl up at the corners as he passes the OPEN sign. He scratches at his left shoulder where the scar tissue still aches and lowers his black ball cap over his eyes as he approaches a couple guys hanging outside the back corner of the dry cleaners three buildings down. There’s no hesitation like there had been the night at Denny’s. No internal debate, no angel-devil duo sitting on his gnarled shoulders. 

No. He reserves those for carrying the weight of the world. 

He reaches down the front of his shirt, fetches his dog tags in his right hand. With the still sensitive nerve endings of his flesh hand, he runs his index finger over the smooth silver, feels for the familiar grooves of his name. BARNES, JAMES B. JEWISH. O NEG. It makes him think briefly of the blind prisoner. Of Braille and all the languages he’ll never learn to read. Of the brain cells that will never grow back.

He pulls the dog tags out and lets them hang on the front of his shirt for once, perhaps for the street cred they’ll provide, perhaps so they can ID his body later, perhaps so God knows what he’s about to do.

The punks look up at the approaching stranger, and just like that, he can taste liberation.

He overpays for the smack and asks for a light. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: relapse of heroin addiction and purchase of heroin


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, guys. He's gonna hurt for a little while.

It happened like this:

Small shuffled steps, like he didn’t have anywhere to be and wasn’t in a rush. People in the ‘hood walk slow. People with money walk fast. These are the lessons he remembers, far more than any line of Shakespeare or trigonometric function. This is the knowledge the concussions let him keep. This is the DNA he has left.

Black cap lowered over his eyes. Wanda’s word for him –  _ Soldier  _ – on replay, turned over and over in his head. Dog tags like gongs, heavy around his neck, like if they threw him in a river he would sink. Drown. Small talk with the boys – and that’s really what they were, still, with round faces that couldn’t grow facial hair. One of them had to’ve been no older than fifteen. Peter’s age. Bucky swallowed.

Drugs are a language of their own. There is simply a dialect, an understanding between one addict and another. Bucky laced together the right words, though deep down he was pleased to find himself a little rusty on the slang, a sign that he might’ve been getting better after all. 

But heroin is like riding a bicycle. The body never forgets.

The boys were distrusting of him at first – his whiteness stood out in the colorful city of Detroit, and his long hair suggested deviant or hipster, and hipsters are not exactly appreciated in the yet-to-be-gentrified corners of the city. Their wariness was understandable. Expected. Bucky soldiered on.

He knew how to soothe the awkwardness. He offered a cigarette with his human hand, an olive branch in the ghetto if there ever was one. There were long moments of silence. Then, they introduced themselves, sitting on upside down buckets and clearly rolling on some good shit. Topaz, Brandon, and Seven. Bucky introduced himself as Bucky. He wasn’t hiding from anything.

They called it dope when he asked what shit they might be on and if they might be in the business of selling. That made it harder. Dope can be a lot of things. Bucky didn’t let on that he was calculating, trying to deduce whether or not they had what he needed.

One minute. Two minutes. It didn’t smell like pot. They weren’t jittery, like they would be if it was crack. He spotted the spoon, and that settled it. It was smack. He’d always called it smack, at least. Or heroin. Or white. Sometimes snow or rocks. Black tar, but that’s what old people and TV shows called it, so it was only ironic now. Whatever the word was, the rule stayed consistent: euphemisms only. No one wanted to think about what they were actually doing. Sucked the fun out of it, and there wasn’t much fun with it to begin. 

It’s not the most efficient, sanitary, or expensive light-up Bucky’s ever done. Or secret, for that matter – he stood over them in broad daylight for crying out loud. They didn’t have a proper rope, so he tied up his good bicep with a shoelace – a trick he learned from Rumlow.  _ Thanks, asshole _ , he thought. Or would have thought, if he’d been thinking.

Bulging veins. Hand screaming for oxygen. He hated the way the veins looked, spidering up his pock-marked forearm. Back in Brooklyn, he’d always needed a buddy to help him shoot up at the elbow. Heroin wasn’t an easy trick for a one-armed addict. It explained all the holes he’d made in his thighs. 

He wondered what Dr. Gupta would think if she saw that this was how he was using the most robotically advanced prototypical arm prosthetic in the nation.

The boys noticed his titanium wrist as he tied himself up. They gawked. Topaz asked a question. Bucky ignored it and asked for the spoon. Topaz pulled back on the wheel of the lighter. Once. Twice. Wind. Hard to catch a light. A joke about fire. A joke about heroin. They passed him the needle and syringe. He felt the needle glide into his skin, a batter crossing home plate. Right into the vein – he had more accuracy than every nurse in Mayo Clinic. You had to be precise when you had liquid gold on your hands. Pierce’s words. Bucky’s mouth tasted like copper. 

But his head fell back with pleasure as he emptied the syringe into his blue veins, eyes closed, mouth forming an ‘o’ in a silent gasp. The same face, he realized with a sickening clench in his stomach, that he made right before Steve made him come. The disturbing thought only lasted a second, though. Three. Four. Five. Six. And then–

 

– the rush.

 

It works like this:

With the shoelace released, the blood from his arm passes through a series of veins back to his heart, where it enters through the inferior vena cava. The vein empties oxygen-poor blood into the right atrium of his heart, which squeezes the blood into his right ventricle, which also squeezes, sending the heroin-muddied blood through the pulmonary artery and into the lungs, where the blood is oxygenated. It then returns to the heart through the pulmonary vein,  where it succeeds through his left atrium and left ventricle and enters his aorta – the main artery of the body. The very center of him. Then the blood, which is only trying to do its goddamn job and keep him alive, obediently surges on to deliver oxygen to what half a brain he has left.

It all happens in less than one second.

The heroin enters his brain. It metabolizes into morphine, which hungrily attaches to every opioid receptor it can find. If a doctor had taken an MRI at that exact moment, she might’ve said “This boy’s brain is on fire,” the way it was lighting up, microscopic fireworks going off in every direction. He then experiences what health professionals and heroin addicts alike call a “rush,” a surge of pleasurable sensation. It’s accompanied by a warm flushing of his skin such that the metal arm feels cold and ticklish to the touch. His mouth goes dry as his pupils inflate.

He will think:  _ I want water. _ He will not get up to get water. His limbs will feel heavy and made of lead. He will become nauseous, and he will itch so intensely at his own cheek that it will bleed. This will be followed by the high, which will be followed by a feeling of drowsiness for several hours.  Eventually the heroin will make him sick, and he will retch and retch until nothing is left. His mental function will be clouded; his heart rate will slow; his breathing will slow.

He will read, later, in a pamphlet Sam Wilson will show him, that the slowing of one’s breathing during a heroin high can lead to coma, permanent brain damage, and fatality. He will not die from this. But he could. 

 

It unravels like this:

_ He feels inflated, like a balloon that’s overfilled and fit to burst. He feels a sudden awareness of his limbs. The metal arm is smooth and weightless. He feels like he’s hovering an inch off the ground. It’s like floating, but heavier, as if his chest is full of air but his feet are made of lead. He feels giddy. This is the funniest thing. This is the funniest thing he’s ever done. He’s smiling so big. So dopey. The kind of smile he might find in his senior yearbook picture, careless and free. It is a weightless smile, and it is easy, and his tongue feels big. _

_ He feels prickly, not like a cactus but like an unshaven leg. This is also hilarious. He feels his face with his hands. All the pieces are still there, yes. Good. He smiles. He’s happy his face is still there.  _

_ He is already walking away before he decides to leave and bursts out laughing because of it. Or in spite of it. He can’t remember, which is also funny. _

_ He’s looking in a mirror, he’s in a bathroom. Nice. When did he get to the bathroom? When did he walk home? Time is lapsing, but he’s so fucking happy. His neurons are having a party and the music is as high as it can go. He’s on the bedroom floor now. This is his bedroom. He must have teleported, or skipped, or run. No, he walked. It was cold. Now he remembers. He tried to buy flowers – he tried to buy flowers that looked like candy, but his tongue had been too big, he was smiling too big to buy flowers and they made him dizzy so he left. He felt his tongue now, with metal fingers. He squeezed too hard and jerked back, which made him laugh. Still there. His mouth was so dry. He coughed. He thought about getting water, but it was so far, and his legs were so heavy.  _

_ How long has he been running his fingers over the carpet? Oh no oh no oh no oh no he catches sight of his arm, his arm with the blood running to the elbow, so red, not pink like Planned Parenthood, pink like Wanda’s cardigan, pink like like like like like like _

_ Woah. He’s so dizzy. The room is at a tilt and his stomach rolls over like a dead dog. He can’t remember the last time he was this high. Heroin heroin why did he do it why? Madge at NA is going to be so mad at him. Madge is going to kill him. I’m sorry Madge I’m sorry Madge I’m sorry Clint I’m sorry Sam I’m sorry Bruce I want OFF this RIDE let me OFF.  _

_ He’s crying. He’s rubbing his eyes too hard, they hurt, he can see lights behind them from the pressure. No more rubbing his eyes. What time is it? He’s itching, everything is buzzing who put a hive of bees in his skin? How long has it been? The window – the window is dark. He missed dinner. Did he miss dinner? He’s so....sleepy. Who’s cooking? It’s not funny anymore. No more no more no more no more. He feels so warm, grossly warm, he peels off all of his clothes and lays in the middle of his floor. There’s blood. It’s not coming from his arm. He pulls his hand away from his cheek. His fingernails are bloody. It’s not funny anymore.  _

_ Calm. Keep calm. Sleep it off. Sleep it off it’s going to be okay nobody’s going to know.  _

There’s a knock on his door.

“Hey, Buck. Clint, uh, Clint said you two got into it today.”  _ It’s Steve oh no oh no oh no. Bite lip. Blood. Fuck. Don’t come in, don’t come in, fuck, still high, let me off this fucking ride.  _ “He won’t tell me what happened, though. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. Can I come in?”

_ Answer. Answer. Say something. Words. Huh. Fat tongue. Swallow. Blink blink he is waiting for an answer he is WAITING Barnes Christ what is crawling in your skin Barnes answer Barnes that’s Steve he needs an answer– _

“Need a minute. Maybe later.” _ His voice. Stings like honey bees, needs honey on his throat on his hands thinks about the flavor of Cheerios, the cardboard texture, dry, his mouth is a desert, he’s in a desert, pools of blood, blood running down his arm oh god it’s on the carpet, he got blood on the carpet and Steve’s going to know he’s high. Planned Parenthood papers on the floor, on the floor by the mirror, no mirrors, no seeing. He opens his eyes – they were closed? – reads the papers. Reads the papers, maybe they will ground him. What will make him sober? Bread? Cheerios? All those Negatives he was so proud of? Reading makes him nauseous sick sick sick no time, Steve, no time. _

_ Sleep. Sleep it off, Barnes. You’re too fucking high for this shit. _

He finally, mercifully falls asleep as the heroin pulls a drowsy, warm blanket over him. But he awakes to the ol’ falling nightmare, and finds himself shaky and nauseous, tangled in his own bed sheets. It’s the worst kind of deja vu. He bolts to the bathroom in only his boxers; he must’ve taken the rest of his clothes off. He doesn’t remember when he fell asleep, and he certainly can’t remember the last time he was that high. His stomach lurches, and he finds himself staring at the familiar tile work of Steve’s bathroom floor, sweat beading on his forehead. He can’t help it – tears well in his eyes as he heaves again, more bile splashing into the toilet as he miserably empties his system. He’s so drowsy, just wants to lay down, but he pulls himself off the floor to retch again. Bucky does his best not to notice the splotches of red in the water. He flushes them away. His mouth is dry, and he swallows back the sandy deserts of Afghanistan, trying to count to ten before the panic sets in.

It might be the heroin making him retch, but Bucky knows better. This is the sickness that comes with shame. Bucky is sick of himself.

 

\---

 

“What should we  _ do _ ?” It’s Scott’s voice. Bucky checks his watch. 8:00 AM. He’s fallen asleep with his metal arm dangling across the toilet bowl – it’d surely be asleep if it were a real limb, and the fact that it isn’t makes his skin crawl. His cheek presses against the porcelain rim. He can feel the red indents it’s made on his face and the drool crusted to his chin. A real beauty queen, he is. He intentionally does not look at his right arm. He is afraid it will make him throw up again. 

Too late. He straightens his knees under him and gets ready for the next wave.  _ Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.  _ The sick burns on its way out. He’d forgotten how much vomiting came with this shit. No one wonder he used to be so fucking skinny. 

“Tell Sam?” That’s Bruce’s voice. 

“Seems harsh.” Scott again. They’re whispering, at least. 

“Yeah, well, so is relapse. _ ” _

_ “ _ Are you even sure he relapsed?”

“No.” A pause. Bucky imagines Banner shrugging sadly. “He’s puking, man.”

_ “ _ Stomach flu? Food poisoning?” The hopeful notes in Scott’s voice shatter his heart.

“That’s heroin if I ever saw it.”

“Fuck. Bucky, why, man?” Scott says aloud, for Bruce’s sake more than Bucky’s. Bucky can hear his fingers tapping on the door – not a knock but a disappointed, final pat, like one might do on a coffin before it’s lowered into the ground.

Bucky, of course, remains silent, alone, half-naked and hunched over the rim of the toilet bowl. He should really just start taking his meals in here.

 

When he’s sure they’re gone, Bucky slips into his room, feeling woozy. It’s not as bad as last time, the withdrawals, but he’s feeling less than chipper and gets another brain zap that makes his spine tingle like an electric shock. It makes him think of Pierce, which makes him puke into the tiny garbage can by the mirror. The hive of bees isn’t entirely gone. He wonders if Brandon and Topaz and what’s-his-name are still out there. He wonders what just one more hit might do – then he’ll give up, for good, for real this time. 

He puts his shoes on – right and left. He can’t focus too well, his mind not aching so much as pulsing, so he lights a smoke as he pulls on his work uniform, black T-shirt with a cherry red star on the sleeve that says Coulson’s. Takes another drag to concentrate, ties up his hair. He drops the hair tie three times – he’s shaking, bad. Not from the heroin, but from the nerves. What do they know? What does Steve know? What’s going to happen?

If he acts like nothing happened, did nothing happen? It’s not like he has a stash or something. It was just the one time, really a drop in the bucket all things considered. He won’t do it again. He’ll just… shit, he’ll go to work, act like nothing happened, he’s done with this stupid drug.

_ Knock, knock. _

“Hey, Buck, it’s me.”  _ Sam. _

“‘Sup? I’m getting ready for work,” he yells out, keeping his bedroom door closed. His voice is steady, but he’s hunched at the sound of Sam’s voice, waiting with bated breath. He sees the two red scratches he made in his cheek in the mirror. Everything’s  _ fine _ .

“Buck… ” Sam says in a way that means whatever he’s about to say next is gonna hurt. “You and I both know you ain’t goin’ to work today.”

“Wh–what do you mean?” Bucky stammers, nervous now. He goes through the rules his mama taught him as a boy – how to talk to the police.  _ Never admit to anything you done. Never offer up anything first. Ask for a lawyer. Play dumb.  _

“Don’t make me say it, Barnes.”

Bucky sighs. There’s no use. He opens the door with his metal hand, his right pinching the cigarette away from his lips. He blows smoke.

“You gonna call the cops on me?” Bucky dares, vaguely thug-like. He can feel himself slipping into his old skin, trying to be tough, but it fits in all the wrong places, bulgy and awkward. This is not him, not anymore. He’s Bucky, who is gentle and likes taking Dodge for long walks. Who buys flowers for people so often the Iranian couple knows him by name. Who curls Wanda’s hair and lets her curl his. Who reads so late into the night that he falls asleep with the book still open in his lap and the desk lamp on. Who learned sign language in three months when his ma started going deaf. He is soft and tender and open like a wound. He swallows and resets his chin. He will be tough for now. He is on the defense, and this is his battle, and he will not fucking  _ feel. _

“No,” Sam says simply, not giving in to Bucky’s facade at all – not even humoring it. He stays gentle and kind, like he’s talking to an old friend. Or a scared animal. Not an asshole who just spat  _ you gonna call the cops on me? _

“No?” Bucky stutters as no witty comebacks come to him. He can feel how stupid he looks. He really thought Sam was gonna call the police.

“No, the police induce trauma and use the state’s monopoly on violence to abuse those of lower status, particularly black and brown bodies, of which this house holds many. If we can handle this ourselves, we will. That’s always the goal. We have rules and practices in place for healing and restoration, not punishment and retributive justice,” Sam says easily. Bucky gawks.

“So… no punishment?” So much for the tough guy facade. Bucky sounds like a child.

“Barnes,” Sam sighs, shakes his head and leans against the doorframe to Bucky’s room. “We ain’t gonna punish you for being an addict. Relapse is unfortunately a part of the healing process. We  _ are  _ gonna host a house meeting, though. That’s protocol. And it’s communal, and consensus-based, which means we’re all going to sit in a circle and talk it out until everyone feels satisfied, including you. Even if it takes all night.”

“We’re doing this  _ tonight? _ ”

“Tonight,” Sam confirms. His tone is a stamp with the seal.

“But no one… no one’s going to tell the police? I’m not going to prison?” He’d been sure this was it. He’d been sure he threw it all away – Steve, the house, NA, therapy. His entire support network gone with one well-placed dose _. _ It’s then that his eyes well with tears – he can’t help it. There is something about being forgiven by Sam Wilson, here, now, on this floor, in southeast Detroit, on this Thursday morning, that breaks him. 

Sam comes to his rescue, hugging him hard with both arms. Bucky sniffs against his shoulder. It’s not a Steve-hug, where he feels enveloped and safe, but it is a Sam-hug, and it is special in its rarity. 

“No punishment, Bucky,” Sam says with a sad smile, pulling away, like he understands the pain in Bucky’s tears and the heartbreaking relief washing over him. Bucky’s a skittish animal after all. A dog from the pound that has to be reminded every five minutes that no one is going to hit it with the newspaper. That it doesn’t  _ deserve  _ to be hit with a newspaper.

All of a sudden a horrible, high-pitched whirring sound comes keening from the kitchen, only a few feet away from where Sam and Bucky have just pulled apart. Bucky’s hands fly up to his ears, his head pounding with the noise and his stomach flipping. It’s like a hangover, but about eight times worse.

“What  _ is  _ that?” Bucky says, his face scrunched up in disgust.

“The coffeemaker,” Sam says, unable to hide his smirk. Bucky likes the way it pulls at his goatee, even if he doesn’t appreciate the smirk right now.

“Well what’s it  _ doing _ ?” 

“The Lord’s work,” Sam says, face going deadpan as he crosses his arms. And it almost feels normal, except that Sam knows that Bucky injected himself with heroin last night, and there are still unknown consequences to be paid.

Bucky’s face falls a bit. Sam looks at him with pity, which, yeah, he’s earned. He claps him once on his good shoulder.

“It’s gonna be okay, man.”

Bucky hums noncommittally, eyes flickering away. He has the sudden urge to be very, very alone, to sleep until all of this is just a bad dream, to click rewind like Adam Sandler did in that one shitty movie of his, to run as far from here as possible.

“No punishment,” Bucky reiterates, more to himself than to Sam, who nods anyway. 

“No punishment,” Sam says, like he’s happy to say it as many times as Bucky needs to hear it. But then Sam’s face changes, turns sour. “But, uh, Bucky? There is one thing. You’re gonna have to tell Steve.”

  
  



	10. Chapter 10

In the end, Sam’s threat turns out to be pretty empty.

He texts the group chat:  _ Mandatory house meeting. Tonight. 8 pm.  _

Wade responds:  _ Are we finally putting house orgy back on the table?!  _

Then Wade responds  _ again: Are we *having* the house orgy *on* the table??? _

No one else replies. Bucky wonders if there are other, smaller group chats blowing up. 

Bucky had paced all day, logged miles as he moved back and forth across his small bedroom or, when no one was around, the kitchen. He went up to Steve’s room, once, but couldn’t bear to walk all the way inside. He didn’t eat anything. He tried to journal, ripped out pages, and crumpled them cartoonishly, always missing the waste basket. He talked to Sam, a little. Clint had the good nature to apologize for being harsh the day before (he couldn’t stay mad at Bucky for too long) and to bring him a steaming mug of coffee. It stung to remember how their roles were reversed the last time they were in this mess, when it was Bucky with the coffee and pity and Clint riding out the illicit substances with glassy, apologetic eyes. 

Jessica popped in on her lunch break. Sam went to the VA hospital. Time dragged. 

Mostly, he just tried to find a way to string together the right words to tell Steve. Steven Rogers, the first man he ever loved. The man who could redirect Bucky’s moral compass when it spun out of control. The man who hated bullies, whose face lit up when he saw Dodge’s floppy ears waiting for him in the window. This was the man to whom he had confess his heroin hiccup.

Nothing sounded right.  _ Hey, Steve, how was work? Also, I did some heroin yesterday!  _ Bucky tried writing it down. Rehearsing in his mirror. Rehearsing for Clint, who  _ honest  _ tried not to laugh but couldn’t help himself.

Barton’s laughter was contagious, and Bucky’s confessions became more ridiculous.  _ Hey, Steve, welcome home! I made you a ham and just-so-you-know-I-did-heroin sandwich!  _ Clint lost his shit. They reveled in the absurdity of it, and Bucky kept chuckling before he could even get out the punch line. 

Of course, it wasn’t funny. But it had to be. Because if it wasn’t funny, it was fucking depressing, a dark hole he wasn’t sure he could claw himself out of once he fell in. It was either laugh or bury himself. And Bucky, the survivor he was, chose the former. 

 

The unmistakable wheels-on-gravel crunch of the Jeep pulling into the carport wipes the smile right off of Bucky’s face. Clint respectfully slips out of Bucky’s room with a salute, and Bucky’s entire chest freezes up. He’s been waiting all day for this, and now that the moment is here, he wishes for another day. Or ten.

Steve’s home. 

Suddenly, Bucky feels like he’s four years old again, waiting for his dad to get off of work in the city, put his leather suitcase on the kitchen table and start complaining to Ma about the office while throwing a giggling 2-year-old Becca over his shoulders. They were an old-fashioned family, what with his dad at the head of the household, his mother stay-at-home and in charge of all the housekeeping, but it was quaint in its way. On her death bed, his ma confessed that she was glad to lose the hearing so she couldn’t hear his dad complain no more. She had laughed, then. She had chosen to laugh instead of burying herself. 

Of course, they had had to bury her anyway. But still. Like mother, like son. Apples and trees and all that.

Steve, however, would not be throwing Bucky over his shoulder in a fit of giggles. He might throw a few other things, though. Like a plate. Or a tantrum. Or Bucky out of the house, along with their budding relationship.

Bucky steps out his bedroom door and into the kitchen. His hair’s down, long and framing his face, and he fusses with it, adjusts and readjusts his posture as he leans on the countertop of the island. Dodge barks predictably, pawing at the window by the door, waiting for his favorite human to come home. 

The door handle jingles. Scott politely drifts upstairs and nudges Luke and Rhodey to get the hint and do the same. Bucky’s alone.

Damn word travels fast around here.

“Hellooo!” Steve calls cheerfully into the house. Bucky realizes suddenly that he doesn’t know what Sam told Steve about why Bucky hadn’t needed a ride to work today. He doesn’t know what Steve knows  _ at all.  _ He figured the house group chat might have tipped him off, but Steve looks completely unhindered, like he could burst into pleasant whistling at any moment. Christ.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve smiles easily, rounding the corner of the island, setting his bag on the counter, and pulling Bucky in for a peck on the lips. He looks around, and his smile falters almost imperceptibly. “Where is everyone?”

“Steve, we need to talk.”

Bucky leads him by the hand to the love seat and makes him sit, though he himself remains standing, wringing his hands like an idiot. Steve looks concerned, but, well, Steve sort of always looks concerned. 

“What’s going on?” Steve asks gently.

“The first thing you should know is: I love you,” he starts, going completely and utterly off-script, which can only end well. He doesn’t break eye contact with Steve. 

“I love you, too,” Steve responds, automatic but still inquisitive.

“I know. I know. Which is why I have to be honest. Because for once in my life I want something to work  _ so bad  _ which means it has to built on, like, honesty. And stuff.”  _ Should’ve stuck to the script, Barnes.  _ “Because… you can’t be in love with a… with an ideal version of me, in your head. You have to be in love with the actual me. And actual me fucks up. Kind of a lot.”

Steve has the good grace to not interrupt or ask questions. The man’s patience is unknown to mankind. Bucky thinks Steve could sit there frozen for seventy years and would still be waiting for Bucky on the other side of it.

“I mean, by now… you already probably know what I’m gonna say. And if that’s enough for you to leave, or kick me out, or whatever, you know, I don’t blame you. I don’t care if you think you signed up for this, or you feel like you have to make good on a bullshit commitment, or something. I don’t… want you to stay because you feel like you have to. _ ”  _ And then, in one breath: “I shot up yesterday.”

Steve nods and works his jaw like he’s chewing on it. “Okay,” he finally bleats.

“That’s it?  _ Okay?  _ Rogers, I – I broke a house rule. The biggest house rule. More than that, I broke a  _ promise.  _ I let my demons in, I mean, Steve, I walked out that front door and just  _ bought  _ heroin. From strangers! I – it was like I was possessed. I don’t know what came over me. I was, I wasn’t myself. I’m not myself. You can’t date… you can’t date someone who’s going to  _ spiral  _ like this, Steve. I’m a black hole. Don’t let me suck you in, too. You’re too good for this, Stevie. You’re too  _ good. _ ”

“You breaking up with me?” Steve asks, looking up at Bucky with concern in his eyes that Bucky can’t read. Is he mad? Sad? Is that… is that a  _ smile? _

“Well if you’re not fucking going to say it I might as well!” Bucky spits, angry now. Why can’t Steve just  _ yell at him like he fucking deserves. _

Steve huffs a not-laugh through his nose and reaches both hands forward, grabbing one of Bucky’s in each of his. “I would very much not like to end this relationship, Bucky,” he says simply, and Bucky’s not sure if he heard him correctly.

Bucky feels the warmth of Steve’s dinner-plate sized hand in his right, the squeeze of pressure with his left. He looks from hand to hand like he’s watching a tennis match, like he’s never seen people hold hands before.

“ _ Why are you doing this? _ ” Bucky whispers, not taking his eyes off their gripped hands, trying with every fiber of his being to stifle the fucking  _ hope  _ that’s bubbling through his chest. Better to quench the fire before it burns down the house.

“Because my life is better with you in it.”

“Steve, I – did you miss the part where I did  _ heroin?  _ Yesterday?!”

“Exactly,” Steve says, breathy and quiet. “Yesterday. And here you are, telling me. Right away.”

“Steve,” Bucky mouths more than says. Here is the kicker; this is where it ends. He summons the courage to raise his voice and break Steve’s heart. “Steve, I – I don’t know if I would be telling you right now if Sam wasn’t making me.”

“I figured,” Steve shrugs. Why was the man being so damn  _ cool  _ about this?!

“I’m… confused?” Bucky tries, his words curling up an octave and into a question at the end. He pulls his hands out of Steve’s and turns around. His body immediately feels cold, but he can’t look at Steve anymore. He can’t bear that kind of endless forgiveness.

“Bucky,” Steve says, and Bucky can hear him standing up from the love seat behind him, though Steve doesn’t touch him or come up from the back. He knows better than to spook PTSD-ridden vets. Always conscious, self-aware, considerate,  _ good.  _ “I didn’t want you to relapse. I don’t want you to ever do heroin ever again. I wish you had never done it in the first place, even if that would have meant I never had the privilege to know you. But in this universe, these are how the cards were dealt, and I  _ do  _ have the privilege to know you. It wouldn’t be recovery if you didn’t shoot up again. That’s why you live in this house. Not because I think you’re funny and charming and sexy – which I do – but because you have an addiction. So we have safety nets to catch you. Sam told you to tell me because it’s hard to do that on your own; sometimes you need a little help. We’re all here to catch each other, Buck. This isn’t a day I was waiting for, but it was a day that I knew might come. Am I disappointed? Some. Do I wish it hadn’t happened? Of course, Bucky. I want you to be safe and healthy. But am I mad? Is this completely out of left field? Not really, Buck. I told you on our first date: I don’t scare easy.”

“Steve…”

“You’ve been punishing yourself enough all day, Buck. You need a partner who’s gonna stand by you and support you, not tear you down.”

Bucky turns around and crumples into Steve’s arms, noticing for the umpteenth time how he should be the one consoling Steve, not the other way around. But before he knows it, he’s balling – not just a few tears but full-on ugly-crying against Steve. He’s played ping-pong with his brain, meds and no meds,  _ heroin _ , sleep deprivation, stress, anticipating Steve’s  _ hatred _ tonight, a hatred that never came, because  _ fuck  _ Steve is being so loving and forgiving and he just can’t  _ handle  _ it. He can’t handle the stability. The sureness. If he starts believing that Steve will never leave him, no matter how badly he fucks up,  _ then  _ where will he be? On the floor in a heroin coma? Overdosed like the kids on the news every other day? He collapses from it all, legs going out from under him, and he doesn’t even notice how Steve gently brings him into his own dark bedroom and sits him down,  _ shush _ ing his tears quietly as the meltdown runs its course.

 

\---

 

The phone call to Natasha goes infinitely worse. There is nonsensical screaming. And for the first time in his twenty-six years, he makes Nat cry.

“ _ How dare you?”  _ she shouts out into the phone. Bucky shrivels at her words, and Steve, silent beside him, holds his hand tighter. Bucky is sure Steve can hear everything she’s saying, even as the cell is pressed only to his ear. She’s a loud one, Natasha. Maybe that’s why Steve went easy on him. “ _ I dropped you off in the fucking Midwest at the most rehabilitative halfway house I could find! We had Tony fucking Stark, the nation’s LEADING TECH ENGINEER, put you back together again so you could stop fucking feeling SORRY for yourself and get your life back together. You are dating the fucking BEEFIEST MAN in the continental United States and you are throwing it all away for fucking HEROIN?! Have you learned ANYTHING, Barnes? Have you learned one goddamn thing? You know fucking better, Bucky. Grow the fuck up.” _

Steve winces. Nat starts sobbing into the phone.

“I’m sorry, Natasha,” he says lamely. There is not much to say.

“ _ I just… I don’t want to lose you, Bucky,”  _ she sobs.

“I know. You won’t.”

“ _ How can you say that? How can you promise me that?” _

“I–I can’t, Nat. I’m an addict. It’s not fair of me to make any promises. You’re right.”

_ “Sorry for all the mean things I said,” _ she mutters. An apology from Natasha is like a solar eclipse: you get one, maybe two, in a lifetime.

“It’s okay to be mad, Nat. I’m… I’m real sorry for hurting you.”

Christ. Heroin comes with a lot of  _ crying. _

 

\---

 

At eight o’clock sharp, the house meeting begins, with Bucky in the hot seat.

They’ve had plenty of house meetings – for serious things, like when Clint relapsed or to come up with a plan of action to aid their neighbors during the Detroit water shutoffs, and for logistical things like how chores were to be delegated or transportation to be arranged – but Bucky’s never seen it like this before. Rhodes has got the house laptop out so he can take  _ minutes.  _ Everyone  _ signs in _ and starts to fill the living room. The TV’s off even though college basketball is on, which has to be a first in house history. It’s so tight, with everyone crammed onto the hodge podge furniture, that Clint had to go into the garage and hunt up some old folding chairs. Just about everyone’s got coffee – a sign that this is going to be a long night – and Bucky reads their ridiculous sayings:  _ Arizona is for Lovers _ , reads Clint’s;  _ I’d rather be driving a Titleist _ , reads Wanda’s. Bruce’s says, _ I survived the Tower of Terror! _ But they only distract him for so long before he goes back to picking at his hand. 

Sam calls the meeting to order. It is an ungodly seven-hour meeting.

Bucky gets to start, which he finds to be both a welcome courtesy and a grueling punishment. It’s almost too cliché.  _ Hi, I’m Bucky Barnes, and I’m addicted to heroin  _ followed by robotic voices, in unison, “Hi, Bucky.” Okay – that’s not quite how it goes, but it sort of feels like it.

One thing is for sure: it’s honesty hour dialed to eleven. After Bucky explains that  _ not  _ doing heroin on the night he’d gone to Denny’s had felt like he’d passed some kind of test, and that everyone’s disappointment in him had driven him over the edge, the panic slides in, so they all take a five minute cooldown. 

They have to cool down a lot.

Vision squeezes Wanda’s hand tightly when it’s her turn to speak (they’re all very good at taking turns, Sam has a strict no-interruptions policy in his Circle). She looks scared, more than anything, which is a rather disconcerting look on the most frightening woman he knows. She talks about how she was projecting her own abandonment issues on him. “I don’t know  _ why  _ we all set the bar so high for you, Soldier. That wasn’t fair of us.”

Bucky raises his titanium arm. Sam nods at him, giving him permission to speak. Bucky’s allowed to respond to everyone – that’s a rule, too. He tells her that he needed her, that she’s one of the  few people in this world who can really calm him down, and that it hurt to not have her on his side. Then he tells her that he doesn’t even  _ like  _ the nickname. Soldiers follow orders blindly. Soldiers  _ fall. _ She blanches, and they move on.

Thor talks about love and how they should all just get along. Clint signs only to Bucky, a long apology sealed with a half-smile which means Bucky’s been completely forgiven. Steve is honest, talking about the realities of relapse, with emphasis how these are the days in which folks like them need to stick together; “a house divided cannot stand.” He really says that. Loki admits what Bucky’s feared the most: that, no offense, but they all sort of expected this. When it’s Wade’s turn, he announces loudly (waking everybody up): “IT’S LAVA!” Sam glares at him. “What? You said I could have the floor,” Wade replies, pleased.

The hours drag on. Everyone has something to say, which in retrospect will seem sort of sweet. Everyone cared enough to put in their two cents. But on hour four, everyone having something to say only makes them put on another pot of coffee. It’s one of the most intense and emotional heart to heart… to heart to heart to hearts Bucky’s ever been part of. They put him through the wringer – scolding him, praising him, reminiscing, advising, bargaining, apologizing. But if anything is evident, it’s that every single person under that roof gives a damn. Even Jessica Jones shows up somewhere around ten o’clock with a hurried, “Sorry, I’m late,” joining Luke on the couch. At eleven, they Skype in Peter Parker. Everyone makes fun of Steve for not being able to set it up and only showing Parker his chin.  _ Grandpa  _ gets thrown around a fair amount.

Eventually, Sam moves the conversation in a new direction: the dreaded now-what.

“Now what?” he asks, point-blank. “How do we move forward from this? Begin to heal as a household?”  
They go back and forth; Bucky doesn’t say a word, just watches the others discuss him and try to come up with something fair. Around two in the morning, the plan is finalized and agreed upon. Bucky will be supervised for the entire week and will not be allowed to leave the house alone. He’ll have nightly check-ins with Sam in addition to his Sunday morning therapy bloc, and he’ll be drug-tested every Sunday in March to make sure he’s staying clean and true to his word. All of that, Bucky can live with. It’s the final demand that makes his stomach flip: they want him to tell Phil, at the shop. Something about integrity in all aspects of his life. Bucky calls bullshit, but he’s pretty outnumbered. He doesn’t fight back too hard; it could be so much worse.

In exchange, no one is allowed to ask Bucky about the relapse or his heroin use save for Steve and Sam as house heads, except in the case of medical emergency. Everyone agrees to taking extra precautions – minding their jokes and Bucky’s triggers, promising to support and engage Bucky in their activities, check in with him. It sounds like it’s going to be annoying, to tell the truth, but Bucky nods along with the rest of them.

Finally, Sam calls the meeting to a close. People drift off one or two at a time, often yawning but making sure to give Bucky a friendly nod or pat on the back as they head off to their various bedrooms. Steve is at his side before Bucky can even get out the words, “Good night,” to his disappearing housemates; it’s for the best, anyway – his voice is hoarse from talking all evening.

“Want to sleep in my room tonight?” Steve asks. Bucky nods.

 

In Steve’s bed, Bucky lays his head on Steve’s chest. They’re both in their pajamas; no point in opening up the Pandora’s Box of their sex life tonight. Besides, exhaustion is creeping in on both of them. Bucky seems to rattle with every inhale; his hand has started trembling again (the flesh hand; the metal hand never wavers).

“I don’t know if it matters, but uh, I got my results back,” Bucky says as Steve stretches over him to turn off the lamp.

“From Planned Parenthood?”  
“Yeah.”

Steve feigns nonchalance, but Bucky can see the way he tenses up. The light goes out. “Sure, it matters, Buck. You wanna talk about it?”

“Negative. All negative. Well, except Chlamydia, but that’s like the best STD to get. Just ten days of antibiotics, and we’re good to go. They already gave me the pills.”

Steve laughs a tired laugh, and his arm tightens around Bucky’s shoulders: a hug. “I’m so glad, Buck.”

“Me, too. ‘Course, I should probably get tested  _ again  _ since… y’know… but still. It was good news.”

“Mmmm,” Steve hums in agreement.

A few moments pass. Their breathing slows. Bucky thinks Steve is already asleep, the way he can feel his chest rising and falling against his back. But then:

“Hey, Buck? I just want you to know how proud I am of you,” he whispers into the dark, right up against Bucky’s scalp so that it tickles. Bucky plants a featherlight kiss on Steve’s hand in response.  _ Thank you. _

 

\---

 

He wakes in a panic in the middle of the night, and for the first time, he’s not falling. 

It’s worse. So much worse.

In his dream, he was sticking needles into Steve. Needles on needles on needles. And the whole time, Steve was just watching him tiredly, letting it happen. “It’s alright, Buck. Go ‘head,” he kept saying. Over and over. Needles on needles, and Steve’s blind reassurance, letting Bucky do whatever he wanted to him.

Feeling sick, Bucky takes his time extracting himself from the bed. Slowly, he pulls the covers off one foot, then the other. Lifts his chin imperceptibly off of Steve’s chest. Shuffles sideways over the course of minutes. Finally, he pulls himself upright and stands, looking down over Steve in the darkness. The relaxed rise and fall of his chest; the trusting slack of his mouth. He groans then, and Bucky’s heart leaps, afraid Steve’ll wake up, but he just rolls himself over into a tight ball.

Bucky takes it as his cue to leave. He tiptoes down the creaky wooden staircase and slips into his own bedroom. Although he hasn’t done it since he was dropped off at this damn house last June, he locks the door and sits on the floor with his back flush against it for the longest time. Perhaps inevitably, he doesn’t sleep at all after that.

It is only in the far reaches of the back of his mind that he feels bad for what he’s done. Steve won’t be pleased, but it doesn’t much help to imagine Steve’s hurt face waking up alone in the morning. Not when all Bucky wants to do is scrub clean every surface he’s ever touched and wash himself right out of Steve’s sheets. There is simply no number of showers that could make Bucky feel clean. Not now.

 

_ \--- _

 

There are two ways to walk in the rain. This is what Sam tells him after the relapse. 

Most people are trying not to get wet. Getting from A to B in the rain without getting wet is damn near impossible, no matter how brisk you walk or how many awnings you slip under. You’re doomed to fail but you’re still miserable while you’re failing. You keep thinking, _if I walk faster, I will get less wet._ You walk faster. You are now out-of-breath, soaked, and yes, still miserable. It might be the coldness of the rain, but it is probably the futility of it all that makes you frown. You want what you cannot have, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t stay dry. One hundred percent effort, zero percent results, plus hypothermia.

The rest of us  _ accept _ that we’re going to get wet. Sam guesses this is maybe 10% of people. Bucky thinks the number feels random but goes along with the analogy because he will do whatever Sam Wilson says if it means not getting a prison number and sitting before the Parole Board in fifteen years like the Murdock guy. If it means being able to stay under this roof, the only place he’s been able to call home since the war. Sam says that the people who step out into the rain already at peace with the fact that they’re going to get wet have a much better walk home. They are just as wet as the people trying to  _ not  _ to get wet, but they’re not losing a battle. This is exactly what they expected. Embraced, even. In fact, some of them may even start to like the rain. Dance in it. It might make them laugh. The rain becomes bearable.

The storms come regardless, is the point, Sam says. You can’t change how wet you get, just how miserable it makes you.

“Is heroin the rain?” Bucky asks grimly, his human hand folded around his metallic elbow while the rest of his bionic arm dangles at his side. Sam’s brought him down to the basement to talk. Therapy and check-ins every day this week; that’s what they agreed on.

“Heroin’s the rain,” Sam agrees without being patronizing, which Bucky can appreciate. He feels infantile regardless, but at least Sam doesn’t make it worse.

“But it rains on everyone,” Bucky says, worrying his bottom lip and still not looking at Sam. “Heroin doesn’t affect everyone.”

“Hm. Think of it this way. The rain’s not heroin, it’s heroin  _ addiction _ . And all heroin users got addiction. You know – cravings, maybe scars, maybe jail time. Maybe ruined some relationships, spent all their money. People done some bad shit on H. That’s just part of the territory. If you always be resisting, tryna not get wet, you gon’ fail. Plain and simple. You can’t  _ not _ get wet at this point. So now it’s about how you feel about gettin’ rained on. ‘Cause the rain is gonna come one way or another. You feel me?”

Bucky thinks about rainy days in Brooklyn. He thinks about a sea of black umbrellas. He thinks of tucking himself into the folds of his mother’s skirt when he was six, shivering against the rain as she held the umbrella out over Becca in the stroller. 

Now he shivers at Sam’s touch. “Buck? You feel me?”

Bucky comes back to the space. He shrugs at Sam. Doesn’t feel like talking much.

“Sorry for all the metaphors.”

“It’s alright.”

“Yeah.”

“Sam?” Bucky says, tightening his grip on the metal elbow. “Is it gonna rain forever?”

 

\---

 

Even though Steve is being overwhelmingly  _ forgiving  _ and  _ understanding  _ (Bucky has a feeling he could’ve shot JFK himself and Steve would just shrug and ask him if he wanted Thai for dinner), Bucky still feels like he has to make it up to him somehow. In the week after his relapse, he wakes up early, in his own room – always his own room, he’s not deserving of a place in Steve’s  _ bed  _ – and makes Steve breakfast. Eggs, sausage, toast, and protein shakes on the mornings Steve goes to the gym. It is his tiny way of saying he’s sorry, and Steve, who’s just as happy with a banana and a granola bar on his way out the door, seems to get it. He never protests, which is normally his way when anyone tries to take care of him. No, he takes the breakfasts with a lopsided grin and a duck of his head and kisses Bucky on the cheek on his way out the door. He’s letting Bucky make it up to him. 

On the first morning after the big house meeting, Bucky notices as he opens the fridge that a new star has appeared beside his name on the Super Star Board. It’s silver and glittery. Beside it, someone in the house has written:  _ For being one strong motherfucker. Hang in there. We have your back.  _

Bucky presses the pad of his thumb to the sticker and closes his eyes.

Back to Day 1. Ground zero. Nowhere to build but up.

With little to do, he mopes at the kitchen table, puts on  _ Good Morning America,  _ and nurses his coffee, crossing and uncrossing his legs. He feels jittery, and the caffeine hasn’t even hit yet. The edginess continues to creep in, his knee bouncing against his metal hand, forcing the plates to reconfigure over and over. It sounds like he’s sharpening a knife. When the anxiety starts becoming unreasonable, he puts his right hand over his heart. 

_ Christ, that’s fast.  _ He puts the coffee down.  _ Maybe not today, pal. _ The back of his neck zaps again. He is twenty-six years old and falling  _ apart. _

Realization dawns on him like an anvil landing on the Wylie Coyote’s head.  _ Oh.  _ Well, fuck. It was the meds, wasn’t it? Might as well start making good choices again, he thinks as he wanders back into the kitchen, looking for those damned little pill bottles. They’re in a tiny locked safe in one of the cabinets – can’t exactly keep a bunch of prescription pills around with a house full of addicts, junkies, and neuro-divergents – and pulls out his dose for the day. Baby steps, Barnes.

With a sigh and an apologetic scratch at his crotch, he washes the pills down with tap water. He knows they can’t be working yet, but the placebo’s strong enough to at least slow the anxiety a little. Even just being back on his routine, in the tiniest way, is comforting. 

Well – until the doorbell rings and he all but jumps out of his skin.

It’s the mailman – Stan, something – and he’s got a few letters and a package for Luke. Bucky signs for the package (a human interaction!) and brings the mail to the island in the kitchen.

 

**Today, 9:36 am**

**To: Steve G. Rogers**

You got a letter from Murdock. Want me to open it?

 

**Today, 9:38 am**

**From: Steve G. Rogers**

Yes!!! [bald eagle emoji] [cactus emoji] [upside down face emoji] [fireworks emoji] [yellow heart emoji] [sparkles emoji] [nerd face emoji] [waving hand emoji] [sun emoji] [SOS emoji] [eyes emoji]

 

**Today, 9:39 am**

**To: Steve G. Rogers**

Are you fucking kidding me

 

But he opens the letter, and out falls a handwritten note (probably by his cellmate, Bucky guesses, considering the whole blind detail) on lined paper. So simple. So short. He looks it over.

 

_ Dear Mr. Rogers and Service Committee Staff: _

 

_ Thank you for all your enduring support for those whom are incarcerated. For me, the AFSC has for 14 years been a steadfast support for the release of those who can be released. The materials you sent to me prior to my public hearing were essential to my success and I wish to thank you all for helping me through a very unnerving process. _

_ Keep up the good work. If I can ever help, my out date is April 25 (a day I thought I would never see).  _

_ Again, thank you. God bless you all. _

 

_ Matthew Murdock, #813664. _

_ P.S. I look forward to shedding that awful number very, very soon, thanks to you. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Detroit water shutoffs are suuuper sad and very much happening. Water in Michigan is in a sad state between Flint, Line 5, Nestle, and the water shutoffs. It's a lot of bullshit, in my humble opinion.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for implied/referenced past self-harm, non-graphic

After countless hours, prison visits, and postage stamps, Matt Murdock is set for release, and as agreed upon, he’ll be moving into the halfway house as soon as he’s on the outside. Not for drug rehabilitative purposes, obviously, but to help him readjust to the outside world, to freedoms he doesn’t even remember having. It can be hard enough to find work and housing as an ex-con, let alone cope with seemingly trivial daily decisions like the number of breakfast options suddenly at your disposal. A stepping stone, Sam calls it (that damn metaphor guru). Sam takes Steve out to dinner the night that Matt’s letter appears to celebrate. Bucky doesn’t say anything when they get home, but he  _ thinks  _ Sam might’ve bought Steve a celebratory beer. His mouth certainly tastes like Corona when he kisses Bucky goodnight (he also hints that Bucky should come upstairs and sleep in his bed tonight, but Bucky declines, still withholding from intimacy with Steve. Bucky hasn’t earned it).

Bucky is not sharing in the good luck that seems to be going around. As per the seven-hour house meeting, Bucky’s obligated to tell Coulson the honest truth as to why he missed work, which seems unfair to him. He’d missed two days for  _ not  _ doing heroin at Denny’s, and another day when Sam trapped him on Thursday and made him wait around to tell Steve that he  _ did  _ chase the dragon. No work days  _ technically missed  _ while on heroin whatsoever. He’s a damn functional addict, alright? Besides, doesn’t he have sick days or something? Didn’t they have unions for this shit? But the house had made its decision. Bucky tells Phil the truth.

Is it rock bottom when the registered sex offender tells you you’re not well enough to work at his auto shop?

“Look, Barnes, you were one of our best. Fastest on the line. But you missed three days of work this week, and you lied to us about the food poisoning. You’ve got a problem. They call us  _ Second  _ Chance Coulson’s. Not third. Not fourth. Come back to me in two months and show me you’ve stayed clean and we can talk about putting you back on the line.”

Bucky stuffs his hands in his pockets and takes Coulson’s news like a bad pill – which is fine, seeing as swallowing pills seems to be all he’s good for these days (and even that’s been spotty this month). Phil is unapologetic, and Bucky realizes sadly that Coulson must do this a lot. Gotta enfore the rules, even if he don’t like it. Once a smackhead, always a smackhead.

“Grab your toolbox and clear out your locker, Barnes. And make sure to check in with Jason about the Crown Vic out back in case there’s anything he needs to know before he takes it over.” Bucky gives him an unhappy nod as he ambles out of the garage with his tail between his legs. Gotta accept it and move on. When he really thinks about it, he can’t really blame Phil. Relapsing isn’t a real good excuse at a place that offers fresh starts to people down on their luck.

He fucked up pretty bad, didn’t he?

Outside, Clint waits for him in Old Man Fury’s pick-up truck. Clint’s his supervision for the day. Being babysat by a barely-sober former methhead had to be Rock Bottom’s close cousin, The Pits.

_ How’d it go?  _ Clint signs, and Bucky immediately feels bad for thinking anything ill of his friend. He’s just so damn irritable, and losing the one dignifying routine in his life certainly isn’t helping.

But Bucky just shakes his head, avoiding further questions, and bungee cords the toolbox onto the bed of the truck.

He doesn’t feel well in the afternoon; the heroin withdrawals are nothing like last time, but he’s got a throbbing headache that neither coffee nor cigarettes can cure. He wonders if it’s the anti-Chlamydia anti-crazy pill regimen that’s doing it as another little brain zap tingles at the base of his neck. The jumpiness from this morning hasn’t gone away even though he’d let his coffee go cold this morning, so he lays in his bed in the dark and bemoans his entire existence, waiting for sleep to come. It doesn’t. 

 

\---

 

A few days later, Bucky hunches over the  _ The Detroit Free Press _ , or The Freep as it’s known around these parts, with a red sharpie in hand. The job openings are so uninspirational it hurts. He scratches at his scalp mindlessly, his knees bouncing.

The General Motors plant? They probably background check.

High school janitor? They definitely background check.

Overnight janitor at the University of Michigan hospital? It won’t be pretty, but Jessica might have an in, though she’s not keen on doing favors for men, which is honestly fair. 

The morgue? Jesus Christ. He can do better than the morgue, can’t he? Besides, even  _ he  _ knows that someone with PTSD like his probably wouldn’t do so hot around decaying bodies. 

As he’s concessionally putting a fat red question mark next to  _ Wayne County Morgue _ , Wanda bursts through the front door, consoling someone on her phone. Her acrylics are long and maroon, and the wings of her eyeliner could slit a man’s throat.

“Baby,  _ baby,  _ I  _ know _ ,” she says into the phone, exasperated. Her purse  _ thunks  _ on the kitchen table beside Bucky, keys  _ jingling  _ as they hit the wood. “Honey, look, it’s – I know it won’t be easy. But Friday will be there. You know what they say, the blood of my… something… is thicker – fuck, Bucky what is it?” 

“The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb,” Bucky supplies, eyes still scanning the newspaper, though he’s no longer absorbing a single word. He takes this as good sign – at least she’s talking to him again.

“Right!” she says to Bucky, then back to her phone, she recites, “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. Your friends are your family, baby. Besides, all that matters is that it’s you and me. That’s all that matters. Okay. I know, love. Yes. Tonight? Okay, okay. I’ll see you then. I love you, too. Bye.”

“Vision?” Bucky proffers. He’s not sure if he and  _ Scarlet  _ are actually on speaking terms or not.

“He’s upset that he has no parents to be at the wedding,” she says with a shrug, trying too hard to be casual. He can see right through her, see her blink more rapidly than usual, but he doesn’t out her. “He’s foster care, you know? Never met his parents. It comes up, when you plan… milestones, like this. The woman at one of the venues we’re looking at just asked him for their names.” Her voice veers on this side of shaky. 

“I’m sorry.” Bucky frowns, and he means it.

“I know you are.”

“C’mere,” he says, not getting up from the kitchen table. She walks over to him and hugs him in the chair from behind, pointy acrylics coming  _ just  _ close enough to his neck to make his heart rate spike. Internally, he is relieved; one, because apparently he is forgiven, and two, because honestly, Vision showing any kind of emotion puts Bucky at ease. He was kind of starting to think the guy was a robot.

Wanda must peek at what he’s doing, because she suddenly changes the subject. “The Classifieds, huh? You get axed at Coulson’s?” She pulls off of him but leaves one hand on his bad shoulder.

Bucky grimaces and gestures vaguely at the job clippings. “Ya think?”

“Sorry.” She clucks her tongue, gives the shoulder a squeeze.

“It’s okay. Might be a little late on my next check, but, you know. I deserve it. ”

She pauses, considering.“Bucky? You do know that you don’t actually  _ deserve _ bad things happening to you. Right? Like you do actually know that?”

Bucky shrugs.

“Oh my god. James  _ Buchanan  _ Barnes, I cannot believe we’re doing this right now. You have it  _ bad.  _ Come with me. This pity party is officially cancelled.” She starts upstairs, her heels making hollow  _ clips  _ on each rickety step, and Bucky helplessly follows after her, the ghosts of her acrylics still prickling at his neck. The classifieds lie open on the table, abandoned.

She leads him down a long hallway of bedrooms that he rarely passes, seeing as Steve’s room is at the top of the staircase, and into her own bathroom. Her things have clearly taken over much of the space – makeup, curling irons, discarded fake eyelashes. There is little to no evidence that Vision even sleeps here, let alone lives here. It fuels Bucky’s robot conspiracy theory. And now fuckin’ Joaquin Phoenix had dragged him to her own personal torture chamber of beauty products and blushes. For a second, the room makes him think of sharing a bathroom with Becca in high school, he a senior, she a freshman, and petty arguments over her hair in the sink and his stealing her mousse to style his hair, which of course he denies to this day. Fresh guilt floods his system, and his poor heart takes off again. He ought to give his sister a call.

But Wanda goes for none of the beauty products as she closes the bathroom door and locks it behind her. It’s a tight space, so Bucky closes the lid of the toilet and has a seat.

“What’s this about?” he asks as she fails to explain herself.

She takes a deep breath. “If this is what it’s going to take for you to stop hating yourself, then this is what we’re going to do. I’m going to warn you now that I’m probably going to cry, and if you ever want to see your friends and family again, you’re not going to breathe a word of this to anyone. Got it?”

Bucky nods very, very quickly.

With that, Wanda hikes up the sleeve of her sweater, revealing all kinds of scars that made their way from her wrist to her bicep. She tells him the stories of every one of them. The ones from her own long history of drug abuse. The ones from jail and prison. The ones from her ex-boyfriend who was fond of using her for shattering plates and glassware against when he was drunk. The self-inflicted ones.

Bucky rolls up his own sleeve. For once, they are matching.

“So, if you’re a piece of shit, then I’m like, ten times the piece of shit you are,” she finally says. Her words are tough but her voice small. “And you know what? Vision doesn’t think I’m a piece of shit at all.”

“You’re not a piece of shit,” Bucky argues.

“Then neither are you.”

Bucky’s lips twitch at the corners.  _ She’s right, you know _ , Steve would say if he were here. Bucky remains lost in thought and runs his flesh-and-blood hand through his hair. The other is holding Wanda’s.

“You know what I think you need?” she asks mischievously.

“Hm?”

“A haircut.”

“Abso-fucking-lutely not, Maximoff. No fucking way.”

“ _ Buckyyyyy _ ,” she whines, and he can feel her nails running through his hair. It is in that moment that he knows he has lost the battle. She doesn’t sink them in, per se, but the threat is there. They’re so  _ sharp.  _ How do people walk around with those things on their  _ hands? _ He vaguely hopes she never gives Vision a handy with those things.  _ Robot _ , his mind supplies. “You’ll look so much more professional when you apply for all those jobs. Besides, man-buns were so 2016.” She handles him like he’s her prey. Bucky almost tells her not to play with her food.

“Alright, fuck. Alright.”

She grabs the scissors off the counter with a little smirk.

  
  
  


Steve actually drops the CVS bag he was holding when he walks in the door and has to chase a  _ very  _ pleased shepherd around the house for ten minutes to get it back.

“Bucky,” he says, eyebrows shooting up to his hairline as he takes in Bucky’s new haircut. And the  _ smile  _ on that face. Christ. “Wow.”  _ Aw, so eloquent, Stevie. _

“Hey, you,” Bucky says, hand flying up self-consciously to his short hair styled with pomade. It’s not buzzed like he had it overseas, but Wanda’s got magic fingers, and the look is sharp and fluffed, the longest bits at the top and full of carefully-styled careless-looking volume. He’s sure he won’t be able to recreate it tomorrow, but for the look on Steve’s face right now, it’s worth it. Bucky ducks his head and runs titanium fingers through the short hair again. Steve takes a dramatic step forward, still taking it all in. His fist clenches. Like he wants to be on top of Bucky.  _ Now. _

“You, uh, like it?” Bucky asks, biting his lip. Well, he never said  _ he  _ was eloquent either, alright?

“I–” Steve says, blinking again. Boy, those cheeks could turn pink.

“Lord above, get a  _ room _ ,” Sam grumbles as his eyes actually, literally roll out of his head.

  
  


“You coming to bed, Buck?” Steve calls later that night to Bucky, who has admittedly been in Steve’s bathroom for a concerning amount of time. “Bed’s cold,” Steve adds from the bedroom, and Bucky can imagine the little pout of Rogers’ lips as he says it. 

“In a minute,” Bucky calls back, but he continues to stare at his reflection in the mirror, the palm of his prosthetic hand pressed against the cool glass of the mirror. A new look. A new… him. A clear face that can receive the sunshine. People can see his  _ eyes _ . A new look, but an old one, too. Fuller cheekbones. A permanent stubble he could never quite do away with. Short hair to show his jawline, the faint scar on his chin from childhood. It’s him. It clicks. He  _ remembers _ . No more hiding. It is maybe okay to be exposed. Maybe okay to be vulnerable.

Tonight, he lets himself lay in Steve’s bed again, if only for a little while. Steve practically vibrates with joy. There are lazy kisses that don’t build to anything more, and there is an egregious amount of happy humming from his idiot beefcake, and Bucky realizes that putting a stairwell between their sleeping bodies wasn’t just punishing him, after all. As good as it is to curl up beside Steve, when his eyes start feeling droopy, Bucky excuses himself with a soft kiss to the back of Steve’s hand.

“Going so soon?”

“Your mattress is lumpy,” Bucky avoids.

“Is not,” Steve mumbles.

“Is too,” Bucky says, ending their debate and slipping out the door with only a soft  _ clang _ as his left arm brushes the door handle. 

 

For the rest of the week, ‘supervision’ means being babysat by one  _ elated  _ Clint Barton, the noble idiot between known self-loathing heroin-addict Bucky Barnes and the sprawling city of Detroit and all its vices.

“What do you wanna do today? Huh?” Clint exclaims cheerfully every morning after Bucky’s made Steve’s apology-breakfast, bouncing on the balls of his feet and barging into Bucky’s room unannounced. A child. He’s being babysat by a child. When Clint actually clasps his hands under his chin with excitement, Bucky realizes he’s not even faking it. He’s  _ actually  _ this excited about a week of one-on-one Barnes time.

It’s equal parts flattering and concerning. Bucky wonders if Clint might take up knitting. Or ice fishing. Underwater basket weaving.  _ Something _ , Christ.

It’s a gray, gloomy February. Loki writes on the fridge calendar the number of days they have gone without seeing the sun. The number climbs. Bucky and Clint go out to coffee shops. They walk to the RenCen. Dodge goes on more walks than he knows what to do with. They fix things around the house – the toaster oven and the mailbox, the hole Bruce’s punched in his wall (definitely made during an angry episode) and the window screen in Wanda and Vision’s room (definitely kicked out during sex). For what it’s worth, Clint is very good at keeping Bucky busy between job applications and interviews and rejections and generally bemoaning his entire existence.

On the last day of Bucky’s weeklong ‘probation,’ Clint grins from ear to ear.

_ We’re going sledding today,  _ he signs as the coffee pot fills.

_ We are?  _ Bucky signs back.

_ Yes. Today I get visitation and Laura is bringing the kids over.  _ Clint inhales the scent of his freshly brewed cup, and his smile gets impossibly wider.

Bucky looks at him ruefully.  _ You sure you want me around your kids? _

__ _ If I don’t let you around my kids, how are they supposed to get to know their Uncle Bucky?  _ Clint signs matter-of-factly. Bucky’s lower lip starts to tremble.

_ Nope, nope, none with that! No crying today! No sir! The kids are gonna be here in five. _

__ Bucky laughs an admittedly watery laugh but collects himself and goes to find his coat. Austin and Amelia are absolute treasures, two matching bundles of coats and fleece and boots that never seem to run out of energy. The snow is still light and fluffy from the day before, and Clint breathlessly runs circles around the park, dragging the sleds behind him and sending the kids down the bunny hills. By the end of the morning, everyone’s cheeks are pink and their eyes bright.

As they all enjoy hot chocolate and grilled cheese sandwiches in the afternoon, Bucky makes the kids laugh when he reveals that he also knows sign language, with Clint pretending not to understand what the kids are saying as they sign secrets to their Uncle Bucky across the table. It is all baby teeth and innocent laughter. It is coloring and watching Clint braid Amelia’s hair. It is drifting off and feigning exhaustion to give Barton a few moments alone with his children. 

It is a welcome distraction from the onslaught of ‘thanks but no thanks’ emails he is bombarded with with every application he sends out. A veteran amputee who stayed unemployed for a year after he came home – not hard for employers to put two and two together. It doesn’t help that he has no college degree to speak of. Not to mention there are few things worse on a résumé than getting fired from the well-known  _ second chance _ auto shop. Diners don’t want him. The fire department doesn’t want him. Pet stores don’t want him. Ice cream shops are closed, but he imagines they wouldn’t want him either. It’s disheartening, to say the least. Sam taps on his bedroom door around dinner with two plates of microwaved leftovers in tow. 

“It’s Fend For Yourself night, and I didn’t see you come out of your room,” Sam says by way of explanation. He gives Bucky a hard look, but passes him a paper plate covered in pasta, coleslaw, and half a muffin. “You know how Thor is. He’ll eat everything in this damn house if you’re not careful. We don’t call it  _ Fend For Yourself  _ for nothing. Remember that time he guarded the stove with the hammer from the garage?”

“Sam, I just – I can’t take all this rejection. Everyone here’s telling me that it just takes time and there’s a lot of other applicants, but I don’t have anything that makes me look good on paper right now. I don’t… know what makes me, me,” Bucky laments the following Sunday morning, back in his usual time slot on Sam’s crowded calendar.

“What might give you purpose, Barnes?”

“I don’t  _ know _ .”

 

\---

 

He forgets his twenty-seventh birthday.

It’s not like  _ last  _ year, where the days of March slurred together and went missing, punctuated only by one strong memory of chowing on late-night McDonald’s with Nat in her apartment after something went wrong for her at work. He doesn’t lose track of time or forget the day of the week. It’s on the calendar and everything. He just  _ forgets _ . It happens to him, sometimes. The concussion and the meds that he started and then took himself off of and then re-started make him feel a little glitchy, his memory going a little Swiss cheese on him. Besides, with all the wallowing, despairing, lamenting, and general moaning he’s penciled into his schedule, it’s easy to stop paying attention to things one might normally look forward to.

Steve  _ doesn’t _ forget Bucky’s twenty-seventh birthday, which is now reason 874 that Steve is the superior boyfriend in this relationship of theirs. Bucky wakes to  _ several  _ pairs of eyes peering at him through the crack of his bedroom door, which of course is  _ great  _ for the heart rate of any PTSD-suffering veteran, and is dragged out front of the house in only his pajamas by one very bouncy Steve Rogers at a very early hour in the morning. Luke and Bruce follow them, a few polite paces behind, and though he can’t see her, Bucky can  _ feel  _ Wanda’s eyes on him from somewhere.

“Okay, you can open your eyes,” Steve says, excitement edging into his voice.

“You got me a  _ car? _ ” Bucky says incredulously, staring with his jaw hanging open as he stands dumbly in the driveway with keys in his hand that  _ belong to him. _ It’s a beat-up white Volkswagen Beetle, a little rough around the edges and halfway to being reclaimed by nature. It’s real; it’s a  _ car  _ with a hood and an engine (probably an engine, he suddenly hopes) and windows and door handles and glass and  _ parts.  _ In their driveway. For real. Steve’s not the type to trick him, but suddenly he doesn’t trust his own eyes.

Jesus Christ, his boyfriend bought him a car.

It feels wrong. He relapses and loses his job and Steve is buying him  _ presents? _ And not, like, an Applebee’s gift card. It’s incredible, it’s a  _ car _ , but what did he possibly do to deserve this? Spend the night with a surly Denny’s waitress? Go to Planned Parenthood four years too late?

“When you say it like that, it sounds a whole lot better than what I actually did,” Steve laughs, arms wrapping around Bucky from behind, who is still shaking his head in disbelief. “You like it?”

“It’s the best sweet sixteen I ever had,” Bucky snarks, but his eyes betray his honest adoration. He fights his way out of Steve’s arms to check it out, lifting up the hood and peering down at the mess of components and tubes. Bucky knows his way around a car, so he struts around to the back and pops the trunk where he knows the engine resides and starts tinkering around. “What year is it?”

“Y1962. A classic fixer-upper. It doesn’t run, you know. Not yet, at least. The guy I got it off of says they’re easy to fix without any special machinery, he’s just got old bones and didn’t have the energy to turn it around. I figured it could be, I don’t know, like a–”

“–project car,” Bucky finishes, grinning ear to ear as he eyes up the engine in front of him. “Oh my gosh, look at that carburetor! Factory original!” He’s too excited to worry about containing his excitement. There’s no need for cool nonchalance when you’re freaking boyfriend gets you a freaking car.

Steve crosses his arms and watches Bucky play with his new toy.

“You really like it?”

“ _ Steve. _ Steven Rogers. This is maybe the nicest, most thoughtful thing anyone has ever done for me,” he says without thinking, then looks up at Steve with surprise at his own words before a sunrise smile breaks across his face. He can’t help it. It  _ is  _ the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for him (maybe excluding Natasha’s cross-country roadtrip with a seizing junkie passed out in the backseat. But this is a different color of kindness). Bucky opens the car door, and Dodge jumps straight into the rat’s-nest passenger seat. He makes a mental note to redo the upholstery. Or, well, the whole interior.

“I guess he likes it, too,” Steve laughs.

 

It takes Bucky a while to warm up to the car. After the initial excitement properly wears off, Bucky finds himself folding back in on himself, like origami that just wants to keep getting smaller. He tells Steve he’ll get to it when the snow melts, but he doesn’t. The car makes him think of Coulson’s and all the cars he’s  _ not  _ fixing, and he feels guilty for the money they must’ve spent on him, even though Wanda’s budgeting and coupon-cutting has saved the house a ton of cash, and Bucky suspects Tony Stark has a horse (and his wallet) in the race. But still, he himself isn’t making a damn dime, and it’s no use looking at parts when he can’t buy any yet. His toolbox is still strapped to Fury’s borrowed pickup in the car port.

The car glares at him from the driveway. He doesn’t even have the energy to glare back.

 

Unsurprisingly, it’s Sam who finally drags him out to the old bug.

“Come on, Barnes, let’s see what it needs. My mama taught me a thing or two about cars back in the day. Show me around.”

“No,” Bucky said into his book, not bothering to look up from the couch.

“You’re moping.”   
“Am not.”

“Dude, I hate to break it to you, but you only did a little heroin.”

“ _ Only? _ ” Bucky chokes out. He’s not exactly mentally prepared for Sam to hit him with  _ you only did a little heroin. _

“Yes.  _ Only.  _ Man, people do some fucked up shit. People  _ hurt  _ each other. There are  _ Nazis  _ again. All things considered, it turned out okay for you. You’re safe. You’re in a place where you can get help. No paper is gonna headline with  _ Local Addict Relapses Once _ , because this happens all the time. It’s part of the process. Quit beating yourself up about it.”

Bucky makes some guttural groans from the couch. But he closes his book. If Sam’s good at one thing, it’s getting people’s attention. Sam knows how to make himself heard. 

“You ever do heroin, Sam?” Bucky asks, not in a mean way. But it’s something he’s been wondering for a long time, and he figures Sam’s answer will help him contextualize his off-color  _ you only did a little heroin  _ comment. Because Bucky can’t exactly imagine throwing up his arms at his next NA meeting and telling someone who relapsed that they  _ only  _ did a  _ little. _

__ “I have not,” Sam says, nodding his head with the gravity of his answer. 

“How did you get here? Get in the business?” Bucky asks him then.

“I’ll tell you while you show me the car,” Sam proposes. Bucky lets his head fall back on the couch dramatically, which Sam waits patiently through, before dragging himself off the couch and making a whole spectacle of it. When he opens the front door, Dodge jumps out and darts straight into the snow. Sam and Bucky chuckle, slipping their slippers on and trudging out into gray March afternoon, not quite warm enough in only flannels and sweatpants.

Bucky starts to give him the tour. It’s half-hearted in the beginning, he’ll be the first to admit, but as he gets going, the excitement builds again. He starts making mental notes – what’s in good shape, what isn’t. The engine’s easy to replace – maybe Steve’ll hold up the rear bumper for him while he switches it out. Might as well put all those gym-hours to the test.

“Let me just – let me just get something from the garage,” Bucky says slowly, seeing something he could fix right away. His fingers itch to get under the car, now. Bucky decidedly ignores Sam’s victorious little smirk as he helps him unstrap and unload his toolbox. An hour later, Bucky’s got the bug up on cinder blocks and he’s under the car replacing one of the leaf springs. Sam’s handing him tools and parts and they’re shooting the breeze. 

Fuck. Sam’s almost  _ too  _ good at this.

But Bucky hasn’t forgotten their deal. “So, how  _ did  _ you get here, man?” he asks again, point-blank when he’s elbows deep in the VW’s engine. Because  _ how  _ did  _ he get here?  _ Sam’s the only one in the house with a story Bucky doesn’t know, and Bucky’s a collector of stories. It’s what made him popular in Hebrew school.

Or so Becca tells him. The concussion took Hebrew school. 

Sam plays dumb. “What you mean?”

“You know what I mean. Helping addicts and convicts. What brought you to our sorry lot, Sam?”

“You playin’ shrink?”

“I might be.”

“I’ll tell Dad,” Sam said.

“You mean Steve?”

“I  _ knew  _ y’all had a Daddy kink!”

“ _ Sam! _ ”

“Alright, alright, I’m playin’. Well, first and foremost, you gotta know that I don’t do no drugs. I mean, a little puff-puff-pass in college, but I figure that doesn’t count.” Bucky barks a laugh. It definitely doesn’t. “But I’ll give you one guess as to why I was raised all by my mama in Harlem.” Sam shrugs. Bucky understands.

“Sorry to hear it.”

“Is what it is.”

So that’s it, then. Sam Wilson is he only person with a clean record in the house. Maybe the world.

 

He keeps at it, and two weeks later, Bucky is officially the grumpiest barista in the Midwest. It’s not exactly giving him  _ purpose _ , but he pays rent on that room, and his drug tests and prescription refills are expensive. Yet another reason to glare at the little pill case Steve pushes at him every morning.

He gets a job at Bella’s Coffee House in Delray, which is convenient, because walking distance, and inconvenient, because  _ barista. _

“Hey, isn’t that, like, a super popular fandom trope? Especially for an AU?” Wade asks him when he comes home covered in milk stains with espresso grounds still in his hair. 

Bucky silences him with a death-glare. Wade shrugs.

First of all, Bucky thinks, there is nothing romantic about coffee. Karl Marx had it all wrong – coffee, not religion, is the opiate of the masses. People from all walks of life sludge into Bella’s, zombie-like, in suits and hard hats alike, to fuel another  _ shitty day at work _ . Coffee is liquid capitalism. They’re all in bad moods, except the girls who think he’s cute, which puts  _ him  _ in a bad mood. He’s also bitter because coffee is fucking expensive and yet by the end of every day, he has watched gallons of the stuff get poured down the drain. It’s so damn wasteful. People are also willing to pay ungodly amounts for a latte; he feels old, but he can remember when five bucks got you a lot more than an espresso shot drowned in steamed milk. 

Do these people know how much  _ milk  _ is in a latte?? It’s just, it’s all  _ milk.  _ And cappuccinos are just espresso and milk and  _ air.  _

Bucky mourns every shift with a mug of distinctly black coffee. The razor-thin silver lining is that at least he’s using his employee discount (a.k.a. asking the coffee shop’s namesake if he can take home the leftovers at the end of his closing shifts). So now the halfway house has Colombian dark roast and the occasional assortment of homemade chocolate croissants and cake pops, which isn’t bad. Loki really likes the cake pops, and Sam’s been a bit more pleasant in the mornings. Doesn’t really make it easier to steam whole milk on a janky espresso machine all day, especially when the metal plates of his left hand start to complain when they overheat from the warm pitchers so he ends up burning the pads of his right fingertips against the hot metal. He should really give Stark a call about it. And maybe he can get Scott in to do some repairs on the espresso machine. Clint promises to come in once a week and visit him, but he expects free coffee and teases Bucky about the pink apron he has to wear, so that’s sort of miserable, too.

But it’s work, which is hard to come by in any economy without a Bachelor’s, harder to come by in Detroit, and hardest to come by when you list your address as the well-known halfway house down the road and have to smile at the employer anyway.

  
  


He feels like his life is starting to get back on track, like the spinner in the board game that flies off but has been forced back into place (admittedly, they play a fair amount of  _ The Game of Life _ ; Bucky always sends his little blue man in the little blue minivan to college). He makes rent for March but digs a little into the small pile of savings he was trying to accrue, hoping to finally do something nice for Steve, and the money he makes at Bella’s doesn’t really compare to what he was making at Coulson’s. On top of that, he’s budgeting carefully for car parts. Even though the junkyards are way cheap and there’s plenty of wrecked bugs to scavenge from, it still costs money. He wouldn’t invest so much in it if he didn’t see how much it meant to Steve. It feels like they go together: if he fixes the car, he repays Steve for all the damage he’s done in the last few weeks. Rebuild the car, rebuild their trust.

He runs into one of the guys from Coulson’s at a 7/11. He doesn’t say hi. Bucky doesn’t either.

So much for the Midwest being friendly.

Steve takes pity on him, and somehow, despite multiple scares, a heroin relapse, a sliced hand, flushed pills, and a number of panic attacks, he and Bucky are doing… well. 

Well, Steve still doesn’t know about the pill-flushing. But why ruin a good thing?

( _ Because honesty is the best policy _ , Sam would say. But Sam doesn’t know either. So.)

Admittedly, their hours are more compatible, what with Bucky working so close now and not needing a forty-five minute drive to and from work every day. It gives them time for other things. Nightly walks with Dodge around the neighborhood become routine, waving to Old Man Fury, whose eyepatch stares them down while he rocks on his front porch. Roughhousing in the snow because Steve just can’t damn well help himself. They go to the gym together, where Bucky watches Steve take punching bags  _ apart  _ (so  _ that’s  _ what he does with all the pent-up anger –  _ noted _ ), and they make time for the usual routines. Eastern Market on Saturdays. Bucky’s therapy on Sunday mornings. Smitten with sketching Bucky, Steve fills notebooks with Bucky’s mug (which,  _ alright _ , yeah, does some fluttery things to Bucky’s stomach). It might have bothered him, to be scrutinized and looked-over, especially when his own face in the mirror can be so unrecognizable and the haircut makes him feel army-issue all over again. But Steve looks so damn happy when he’s drawing Bucky, at ease in a way that always manages to put Bucky in the mood. Sure, he’d never be caught dead  _ saying  _ it, but Bucky feels fucking beautiful when Steve draws him. He can’t retreat behind the long (and great, mind you) hair anymore. In this way, Steve manages to document his recovery. The sketchbooks are like flipbooks. Without meaning to, Steve tracks the sprawling laugh lines of Bucky’s mouth, the hollow gazes on bad days when Bucky’s mind goes places where Steve can’t follow, the hairstyles and hopelessness and stubble and amusement. The changing seasons are documented in scarves and buns, sunglasses and coffee sleeves. 

It is not so bad, to be loved.

 

Living in a halfway house creates an unusual environment. There is routine – endless routine, how else does one coordinate phone bills and carpools and group dinners and making sure no one deletes Clint’s TV shows off the DVR – but there is also constant change. Just when Bucky thinks he’s getting used to it all – Peter and Jessica’s absence, his new career in  _ latte art _ , the increased surveillance after his relapse – the house gets turned upside down again.

Because why  _ wouldn’t _ it?

He comes home from the café one day in the early April to find none other than Matthew Murdock cross-legged on one of the bean bag chairs, twiddling his thumbs. He’s just, like,  _ sitting there.  _

Bucky knows how to act around deaf people. This was a memory he still had: hovering over Becca’s laptop late at night, faces glowing from the screen as they sat up in her top bunk, watching YouTube video after YouTube video of people signing, trying to learn how to talk to their ma. He knows that when he speaks to someone hard of hearing, he’s supposed to look at the person he’s speaking to so that they can read his lips. He’s learned how to spell his name,  _ B-U-C-K-Y _ but also introduce himself with a sign for his name. He just… he  _ knows.  _ For someone as tactless as he is (Army plus a year of heroin-induced couch-surfing will do that to a person), deafness is something he really understands.

Bucky does _not_ , however, know what to do around blind-in-both-eyes, boxing-ring-champion and former prisoner Matthew Michael Murdock, who has suddenly and without ceremony materialized on the bean bag chair, _alone_ , in the living room. Bucky doesn’t even bother to wonder how the guy got _in_ to the house.

Sheesh.

Does he say something? If he’s quiet enough, can he slip in and out of the room without Matthew noticing? What kind of small talk do you make with a guy like this? Should he get Steve? Does Matt see him grimace? Does he  _ sense  _ him grimace? 

What. Does. He. Do. 

While Bucky rocks on his heels, stunned into silence and staring at Matthew with his mouth hanging open, the man in question speaks up.

“You don’t have to be afraid.”

Bucky almost drops his coffee.

“I– uh, sorry. I’m not… I’m not afraid. I just didn’t know you were coming today.”

Matt laughs, standing up. His cane snaps from a tiny six inch thing to five feet, and he starts tapping it back and forth, walking toward Bucky’s voice by the front door. “Sorry about that. I didn’t know either. Am I in the right place? Steve Rogers gave me this address.”

“Y-yes,” Bucky stammers.  _ Control yourself.  _ “Yes, it is. I was at your hearing. At the prison.”

Matthew stops a perfectly comfortable distance from Bucky, as if he  _ could  _ see. He extends his right hand. “Thanks for the support. I mean, if it was support. People come for all kinds of reasons. I’m Matt, by the way. Matt Murdock. I guess you already know that, though.”

Bucky takes it. They shake. “James. But everyone calls me Bucky.”

“Bucky,” Matthew repeats, savoring it, like he really means to learn it.

“Yeah, I’m... Steve’s…” It’s harder to say out loud than it should be. 

“It’s nice to finally meet you. Steve’s told me all about you,” Matt smooths, and he gets crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes behind the red-tinted glasses. Bucky thinks they’re neat.

“Only good things, I hope,” Bucky says awkwardly, scratching the back of his neck. They stand together like that in the foyer, until finally Bucky realizes that it’s his job to show Murdock around, or at the very least offer him something to drink. It doesn’t come naturally to him. “Er, do you want to sit down or something? Do you have any stuff I can help you move? I’m guessing you’re going to move into [name’s] room…?” 

“I think Mr. Rogers will be back soon. At least, that’s what he told me,” Matthew says, and Bucky whips out his phone and starts typing away for Steve to  _ get his ass home immediately. _

When he hears the front door start to jingle, he’s flooded with relief. “Steve, we’ve got someone here–” Bucky starts, clicking off his phone and starting to turn around.

“I’m not Steve,” says a raspy, female voice that he hasn’t heard in person for months.

“The  _ fuck  _ are you doing here, princess?” Bucky blanches, already wrapping his arms around Natasha Romanoff’s middle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience as I do my best to update this story. WiFi, computer troubles, and the incredible work opportunity I have right now are making it slow for me, but I always finish what I start. Thanks for sticking with meeeee

**Author's Note:**

> FAIR WARNING.
> 
> I am in a very rural part of the world, and will be posting SLOWLY. The story is about 95% written but I can't promise reliable updates. They'll come, though. I love these boys too much to give up on 100 pages of pre-written content LOL.
> 
> Also, the AFSC is a real organization in Yspi doing incredible work with the prison systems, and I had the privilege to intern for them once. Just thought I ought to put that out there.


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